


Unity

by whooshboomtree



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: Axl-centric, Gen, Gladiator Games, Lots of chapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 72,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whooshboomtree/pseuds/whooshboomtree
Summary: Relations between humans and Reploids had never been truly peaceful, but Axl had never seen it get this bad in his time. And he certainly never expected that he, of all people, would be the one tasked with saving his brethren and restoring peace. After all, what kind of hero could come of a prototype kid with a gun in his hand?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's safe to say that when I started writing this story in my freshman year of high school, I definitely didn't expect it to be 131 pages, or have this many OCs and character building, or take the better part of 7 years to finish to my satisfaction.  
> But all of that did happen. And I feel far more accomplished than I probably should for a fanfiction.  
> Hold onto your butts dear readers it's going to be a long bumpy ride.

“Team three, north side. Team five, south side. All the rest, with me.”

“Hey, uh, bossman?” The Reploid took off his helmet and scratched his head, lips twitching in a slight frown. “Not to undermine your authority, but y’know this mine is so old that we’re not gonna find anything. It looks like the underground portion collapsed ages ago.”

“Probably true, but we’ve been given direct orders to excavate all mines,” the leader of the team said with a shrug. “Get to work. And everyone be careful,” he added, raising his voice.

The Reploids quickly got to work, their tools breaking effortlessly through rusty steel beams and crumbling wooden supports. There was no small talk; for several hours, the team spoke only to give the occasional order or to request help with a stubborn chunk of stone.

_Clank!_

“What was _that_?” one of the Reploids called out.

“I think we found something!” another exclaimed, cautiously tapping the solid mass of metal with his pick. “Help me pull this up!”

“Careful, there’s some explosives in the vicinity!”

“Scans are showing that they’re inert, we’re good to go.”

The leader of the team hurried over just in time to see the team haul the object out of the trench. “What in the name of Asimov . . . ?”

On the pile of freshly excavated soil lay an unconscious Reploid, his slim figure and soft features giving him the look of someone who couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. His navy-blue armor was streaked with red highlights, clods of dirt sticking in his spiky auburn ponytail, and a deep X-shaped scar marked his face from his temples to his cheeks. There was a pistol in his left hand, his fingers curled around the grip so tightly that it would likely take a good deal of strength to pry the weapon from his hold, even unresponsive as he was. “Get the medic,” the team leader ordered sharply.

The medic in question was already rushing forward, drawing a pair of small electrodes from his kit as he moved. Without a word, he knelt alongside the motionless Reploid and touched the electrodes to the back of his neck. When the Reploid didn’t respond for several long moments, one of the workers piped up with a hesitant, “Is he alive?”

As if in answer to the question, the Reploid’s trigger finger twitched.

“Fascinating,” the medic murmured, carefully increasing the voltage of the electrodes. “Seems like his core went into a low-power stasis mode . . . let’s see if we can get your levels back up, nice and easy now . . .”

The adolescent Reploid slowly opened his teal-green eyes, groaning and immediately closed them again with a wince. “Too bright,” he mumbled. “Wh-where am I? What . . . what’s going on . . . ?”

“Excellent,” the medic sighed, clearly relieved. “He should be fine.”

The Reploid seemed to shiver for a moment before slowly pushing himself up and dusting himself off. He was trembling slightly, but after rubbing his eyes to adjust them to the sharp daylight he appeared to gradually settle down, his shoulders loosening and his wary expression easing. “Maaaan, I’m gonna have grit in my joints for a month.” He rose to his feet, stumbling as his legs tried to give out on him. “Whoa! Thanks for digging me out of there.”

“Er . . . of course. You’re welcome, mister . . .”

“Name’s Axl.” The teen scratched his head, beginning to feel uncomfortable with so many bemused gazes focused on him. The motion of his fingers dislodged several clods of earth from his spiky hair, and after a moment he decided to put on a lopsided smile to hide his unease. “Uh, I oughta get back to headquarters. Thanks again!”

He started off at a sprint, only slowing down when he was well out of sight of the group of workers; something about them had turned his stomach into a tight ball of unease. Once he slowed, he relaxed significantly, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck to loosen up his stiff servos, every movement causing small bits of dirt to sprinkle down from his joints. He was _definitely_ making a beeline for the shower as soon as he got home.

Speaking of home, X and Zero were probably worrying themselves sick. Axl lifted a hand to his communicator, his face falling and his steps halting as he realized something was wrong.

No signal. No static, no busy tone, no on-call messages, _nothing_. From either of them.

Something was _really_ wrong.

Or maybe it was just his communicator, Axl thought to himself as he resumed his walk and tried several more signals, all of which gave him the same silence. Alia, Layer, Pallette, Douglas, Signas- it _had_ to have been his communicator, there was dirt in it or something. Definitely, that was it, so he needed repairs _and_ a shower.

Nearly an hour later, he stopped walking again.

Here. Headquarters should have been right here. Why wasn’t it here? There should have been a building and Hunters everywhere, and why . . .

Why was he staring at a stretch of empty concrete with no buildings or Reploids in sight . . . ?

It was _gone_. Why was it _gone_ , everything was gone and everyone was gone and _where was his home_?!

Not knowing what else to do, he slowly turned and headed down the familiar path toward the nearest town to look for answers. Weeds snaked out from cracks in the asphalt under his feet, and the only sound was the soft clank of his footsteps and an occasional breeze ruffling through the air. As if this whole scenario wasn’t eerie enough, he hadn’t asked _anyone_ for more horror ambiance thank you very much.

It was dark by the time he reached the nearest town, but at the very least, the knot in his stomach loosened a fraction when he saw people still moving about the city streets. Okay, cool, he hadn’t woken up into a complete apocalypse apparently. “Hey there!” he called, spotting a mechanic emerging from a garage. “Can you tell me-”

The human took one look at him, went wide-eyed, and took off down the street.

“Wait! Aw . . .” Axl’s shoulders slumped, a frown tugging at his lips. A moment later, he caught sight of a woman and a child, and he opened his mouth to try again. “‘Scuse me, can you-”

They, too, fled at the sight of him, and Axl rolled his eyes and flung up his hands in frustration. “Come _on_! Can’t anybody take two seconds to talk to me? I’m a Maverick _Hunter_ , not a Maverick!” He glanced around the block for a few moments, the realization that he hadn’t seen a single other Reploid since he had left the workers behind at the mine sending another chill up his spine.

“H-hey you! Over here!”

“Huh?” Axl turned around, smiling when he saw a Reploid waving to him from a dimly lit back alley. “Hi there.”

“Come over here, quickly! Before they find you!”

“Before who what?” Confusion aside, Axl shrugged to himself and did as his fellow Reploid said, leaning his shoulder against the wall lazily once they were a ways into the alley. “What’s going on? Why are you hiding?”

“What do you think you’re _doing_ , you idiot?” the Reploid hissed instead of answering, having crouched down behind a trash can to hide themselves from . . . something, apparently, though Axl couldn’t begin to imagine what.

“I’m trying to find some help,” Axl replied, blinking as if the answer was obvious.

“By talking to humans? After curfew no less?! Are you _crazy_?!”

A pause.

“What . . . exactly are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about getting yourself arrested or worse! You have a work permit, don’t you?”

Silence.

“I think I missed something here,” Axl muttered, rubbing the back of his neck uncertainly.

“You have to _run_! Get far away from this city or you’ll be thrown in the arena for sure! Or at least get inside, you can’t be out after dark!”

“Okay, okay, slow down.” Axl knelt down, placing his hands on the Reploid’s trembling shoulders. “Relax. What’s this about curfews and arenas and work permits? I’m not-”

Someone screamed a short distance away, and Axl was on his feet at once, hand already moving to the gun at his hip. “Right . . . have to talk to you later. Sounds like duty calls.” With a wave of farewell, he hurried out of the alley and sprinted toward the sound, ignoring the other Reploid’s cries of protest.

“So-someone help us!” a young woman screeched, clinging desperately to the arm of the person standing next to her. They were surrounded by three Reploids, all of whom were armed with rusty-looking knives. “Help! Police!”

The person standing next to her simply pulled their arm away from her grasp and brushed a strand of brown hair from in front of their eyes with a grumble, their gaze intently fixed on their attackers. Though their knees shook, they glared defiance at the trio of Reploids who were staggering toward them with lurching gaits and glazed eyes, as though they were drunk. “As if the police are gonna help us. Not good . . .”

The sharp _crack_ of a pistol being fired split the air and echoed off of the surrounding buildings, making all heads turn toward the sound. “You three mind telling me what you think you’re doing?” Axl asked curtly. The friendly smile had disappeared from his face, and his fingers were tight around the trigger of his gun.

“Kill him!” snarled one of the three Reploids. “Kill all three of ‘em!” They took a few unsteady steps toward Axl, in too much of a haze to recognize how quickly the redhead had lifted his gun.

_Crack_!

The Reploid collapsed with a shriek, writhing in pain and clutching at the bullet hole in their foot.

Axl knew without even having to check for viral levels that the trio must’ve all been infected with one thing or another, the slurred speech and balance issues coupled with the violent outbursts feeling all-too-familiar to someone who had spent most of his life shooting at Mavericks. “Listen, all three of you need to be in a hospital. You’re all sick; if you don’t get treatment, your control chips will short-circuit.”

“Sh-shut up!” stuttered the second of the three Reploids. “I’ll kill you, traitor-!”

Axl raised his pistol with a roll of his eyes, in no mood to bother with a flashy fight when so many innocents were around to get caught in the crossfire. “Want me to shoot your foot, too?”

The two remaining Reploids both rushed at him, and not a few moments later, they both lay on the ground, groaning in pain and clutching at fresh wounds. “Well then,” Axl said, his relaxed demeanor returning now that the threat had passed. X and Zero would’ve been rather pleased with how he’d handled that, he thought with a hint of pride- that is, if he could ever find a way to _contact_ X and Zero. “That oughta take care of them until the police get here. You two okay?” he added with a grin at the pair of humans.

The young woman let out another screech of terror when Axl took a pace toward them, and the person next to her winced and cast her an exasperated glance.

“Whoa calm down, easy!” Axl said. “It’s okay; you’re safe now. I’m not gonna hurt you, honest.”

“Don’t move.”

Axl spun around, smiling in relief when he saw that two uniformed police Reploids had approached him from behind. “S’up? It’s about time you guys got here, I got to have all the fun without you.”

“Identification number, please.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“Give us your identification number and worker’s permit.”

“Um . . . I’m Axl?” The gunner tipped his head, shrugging helplessly and running a hand through his spiky ponytail. “I’m a Maverick Hunter? A pretty famous one at that?”

The police began to pace closer to him, and a few more emerged from behind as if to ensure that he couldn’t leave the scene. “Hey whoa, take it easy!” Axl cried. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone; those three on the ground are infected with a virus and-”

“They will be dealt with,” the officer interrupted curtly. “As for you, if you don’t have identification, you must be taken in for questioning.” One of the police Reploids grabbed Axl by the arm, but the gunner immediately yanked away.

“Leave me the hell alone!” he yelped, taking several steps back. “Jeez, talk about ungrateful!”

“ _We_ would have controlled the situation momentarily!”

“Yeah, well _I_ decided to take care of it before someone got hurt.” Axl shouldered past the nearest two authority figures, his grip on his pistol tightening reflexively. Yup, definitely something wrong, definitely a _lot_ of things very really wrong and he did not like it _one bit_. “I’m outta here.”

“He’s rogue,” declared another of the police Reploids. “Possibly Maverick.”

“I am _not_ a damn _Maverick_ , quit treating me like one!” Axl snapped back, turning his head to throw a fierce glare back over his shoulder.

His eyes widened as the police drew their weapons, and he was quick turn and to break into a sprint. He zigsagged to one side as he heard one of the police fire a stungun, shifting his course a second too late and crying out in pain as electricity exploded through his spine and knocked him off his feet midstep. “Dammit,” he groaned, every circuit tingling painfully from the surge of energy. “What’d I ever do to you guys . . .”

“This one has spirit,” said one of the Reploids standing over him. “He’s dangerous.”

“ _Dangerous_?” Axl practically whined. “Aw, come _on_!”

“Protocol says it’s the arena for him,” another agreed.

“No way am I giving up that easily,” Axl growled. With a massive effort, he forced his motor circuits back into activation just long enough to roll over and fire his pistol at the chest of the nearest police Reploid, not really caring if the low-power shot connected or not.

Next thing he knew, a metal foot connected with the side of his head, offlining his systems in an instant.


	2. Chapter 2

“Wake up.”

Axl groaned, his eyes fluttering open and his optics struggling to adjust to the low lighting, the process made that much more difficult due to the throbbing pain in his skull. He could just barely make out the shape of another Reploid standing over him, and he was fairly certain they were well-armored and armed with some kind of pole-shaped something-or-other. “What’s goin’ on?” he mumbled tiredly.

“Are you injured?”

“Nah.” Axl sat up with a soft grunt, rubbing the back of his head and flexing his neck a few times. “Just a headache, tends to happen when you get kicked in the face.”

“Good. Keep your guard up out there; the crowd’s raring for a one-sided match.”

“One-sided match?” Axl echoed as the other Reploid dragged him to his feet. A wide door creaked open, and he squinted against the sudden, harsh light that flooded the hall. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“Just fight,” the Reploid instructed, jabbing Axl in the spine with an electrically-tipped staff.

“Ow-!” Axl stumbled forward, and the door slammed shut behind him with a resounding _bang_. “What a warm welcome. But where . . . the hell . . . ?”

He blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes to the bright sunlight, slowly beginning to make out the details of his location. The high, rounded walls reminded him of a coliseum, though the smooth metal flooring and clear dome overheard were more reminiscent of one of the upper-level simulation decks at Maverick Hunter Headquarters. Throngs of people could be seen in the stands just on the other side of the dome; most were screeching and cheering, but Axl noticed that others seemed to be frightened- of what, he didn’t know, but a faint tremor of unease shook him all the same. Next to the wide entry door, someone seemed to have erected a very realistic statue of a vicious-looking seven-foot-tall sword-wielding Reploid- either that or someone with a sick sense of humor had stood up the corpse of a vicious-looking sword wielding Reploid and left it there on display. Axl really hoped it was the former.

A short distance away stood a bulky Reploid, well over six feet tall and clad from head to toe in shimmering silver armor, his fingers curled around a hefty, spike-covered morningstar. “Er . . . hi there,” Axl greeted.

“Hope you’re ready to die,” the bulky Reploid said with a smirk, immediately dashing the gunner’s hopes of making new friends. “The name’s Vaile, scrap metal, and no Reploid gets past me unscathed.”

“Right . . . nice to meet you, too.” Axl reached for his pistol, feeling a sharp jolt of unease when he realized that it wasn’t _there_. Nobody was _ever_ supposed to touch his pistol unless he specifically said so _whoever took his pistol was going to have hell to pay._ “Uh . . . doesn’t this seem a little unfair?”

“Fair is relative, kid,” Vaile said, hefting his morningstar onto his shoulder.

“Uh-huh.” Axl glanced over his shoulder momentarily, as if searching for an escape route, and then slowly turned back toward his aggressor and settled into a loose combat stance, matching Vaile’s toothy smirk. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

Vaile charged, and Axl leapt, using the larger Reploid’s shoulder like a springboard. The gunner flipped in midair, landing in a neat skid and spinning around to face his opponent again. “Kinda slow, huh?”

“Slow?! I’ll show you _slow_ , scrap metal!”

Vaile lunged once more and Axl took a step away, hands folded behind his back. The larger Reploid pressed forward, but Axl continued to smoothly step back and duck in time with the swipes. “You’re making this too easy, big fella.”

He was beginning to enjoy himself, caught up in the robotic equivalent of an adrenaline rush. No matter how much X always chided him for it, Axl couldn’t resist a good fight, sometimes even couldn’t help but give in to the itch to play defense for a while and stretch out the fun- which was precisely what he did to Vaile for the next several minutes, his amusement growing alongside Vaile’s frustration.

“Ready to give up?” Axl asked at last, panting lightly and still bouncing on his toes with unspent energy. “I could do this all day!”

With an enraged roar, Vaile reared back and flung his morningstar, the spike-covered weapon sailing through the air far faster than Axl expected. He took a sharp step to one side, but not quite in time to stop the morningstar from slamming into his shoulder, one of the spikes tearing through his armor and leaving a splatter of coolant on the smooth arena floor. “Okay, _ow_ , not cool!”

So maybe he couldn’t _actually_ do this all day then.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” he taunted, straightening up and mostly disregarding the sharp pain throbbing through his shoulder and the coolant dripping down his arm.

Vaile snarled in rage, and Axl stuck out his tongue and made a dash for the wall. “Coward!” Vaile yelled, not hesitating to give chase and scooping up his weapon from the ground as he ran.

Without even pausing to brace himself, Axl sprang, quickly kicking his way up the wall and pushing off to backflip over Vaile’s head, letting the larger Reploid’s momentum carry him into the wall at full speed. Axl landed without so much as a stumble, a grin spreading over his features as his opponent stumbled backwards, swayed, and-

_Thud._

The crowd went absolutely wild as the larger Reploid’s body hit the ground, shrieking as loudly as if a football player had just scored a winning touchdown. Axl scratched the back of his head, unsure if he should be relieved that they seemed to like him, or disturbed that they were cheering over what could have very easily become a very bloody situation, as if it was nothing more than an everyday sports game. “For being such a big armored guy, your shock absorbers are crap, Vaile,” he said, only receiving an exasperated groan in response.

A group of Reploids who appeared to be guards entered through the wide door, all armed with staffs, a lone human in sturdy-looking armor standing in the center of the group. Half of the Reploids set about taking Vaile’s unconscious body back inside, while the other half moved to surround the battle’s victor. Axl didn’t relax, instead taking up his defensive stance once again. “Look, I played along with your stupid game, now what’s going _on_?”

“Enough,” the human guard said curtly. “Inside. Now.”

“Not until I get some answers!” Axl insisted.

Another guard thrust his staff forward, but Axl was prepared this time, and he dodged to one side and snatched the weapon out of the other Reploid’s hand, flinging it to the ground and kicking it aside. “Don’t even try it! Now someone better-”

Axl only made it halfway through his demand before a powerful volt of electricity surged up his arm and into his chest and cut his sentence off into a near-scream. Almost at once, he found that his legs would no longer support his weight, and the next thing he saw was the dirt floor of the arena. To his relief, the current coursing through his body faded mere moments later. “What . . . the hell . . . was that?” he gasped.

“That was a warning,” a voice somewhere above him replied. “Do as you’re told.”

A hand grabbed the shaken Reploid by the wrist and lifted him up so that they were at eye level, the gunner’s feet stumbling and skidding unevenly as he struggled to find his balance. “See this ring?” the human guard asked, giving Axl’s arm a shake.

“Uh . . .” Axl had to blink rapidly for several moments before his vision cleared enough to make out the metal bracelet around his forearm. Up until that point, he had been too preoccupied with not getting his head bashed in to notice it. “Y-yeah. I think I get it.”

“Good. Now get inside.”

Axl managed to stagger his way through the halls with guards both behind and in front of him, in spite of struggling to keep his legs from giving way again at every step. The last thing he wanted was for the guards to think that one jolt of electricity could keep him down. They brought him to a small, cell-like room, which he entered without protest. “Rest up,” one of the guards said. “Your cellmate will explain how things work around here.”

“Okay,” Axl mumbled. “I guess . . .”

Another Reploid was sitting on one of the room’s two beds, shoulders leaned back against the wall and eyes closed, and Axl legitimately thought he was in hibernation until he stirred at the noise and opened his eyes. Everything about him all but screamed ‘threat’, from his heavy dark grey armor, the pale blue energy lines along his chest and arms seeming to glow rhythmically along with his corebeat, to the small spikes jutting out on his shoulders and forearms, to the sharp point on the knee of the armor piece covering each of his shins. His intense violet eyes all but glared at his new cellmate from behind shaggy black bangs, and he gave Axl no greeting, even after the guards had exited the room and shut the door.

“Uh, hi,” Axl said at last, still fighting the urge to collapse to the floor and not get back up for a good long time.

“You survived,” his cellmate said simply, his voice quiet and rough to Axl’s ears.

“Pretty sure I did.”

“You may as well sit. No one’s stopping you.”

Axl gratefully sank down onto the empty bed, relieved beyond words to find his pistol resting on the pillow- though he still wanted to punch the teeth out of whoever had taken it from him in the first place. “Well, at least they gave me my weapon back,” he said with a forced half-smile.

“I wouldn’t try anything,” the black-haired Reploid said. “You won’t get very far.”

“Yeah.” Axl rubbed his wrist unconsciously. “I figured that out already. I’m Axl, by the way.”

“Skrah.”

“Nice . . . nice to meet you too,” Axl said, unsure if he should be offended by the bluntness of the response. “What is this place anyway?”

“An arena.” Skrah’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, a hint of something like disbelief crossing his features for a moment- or at least Axl assumed it was disbelief, it was hard to tell when the shift was no more than a momentary twitch. “The last stop for Reploids who think it’s okay to mix with humans. Just do as you’re told and try not to die.”

“Huh . . . I would think that the Maverick Hunters would look into something like this. I mean, Reploids going missing, giant-ass really blatant ripoff of a Roman coliseum . . .”

Skrah rolled his eyes, shaking his head and running a hand through his short black hair. “Maverick Hunters?” he echoed dryly. “Yeah, right. Go to bed and get some rest; you’ll need your strength.”

Unsettled, Axl stretched out across the mattress, which may as well have been made of scrap metal for how comfortable it was. His cellmate’s indifferent dismissal had only added to his growing list of worries, and he still had a long list of questions to which he was slowly piecing together probable answers that he really _really_ didn’t like. The only bright side he could see thus far was that his shoulder wasn’t badly injured, his auto-repairs already beginning to assess and work at fixing the damage.

Hoping that answers would come with time, all he could think to do for the moment was stare upwards and count the speckles in the ceiling tiles until he drifted into a fitful sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

A bang on the door jolted Axl out of his sleep, and he jerked into a sitting position with a startled yelp. Skrah sat up more slowly, as if completely unfazed by the sudden rude awakening. “Sparring in ten,” called a guard’s voice from outside.

“So when you’re not fighting to the death, you’re practicing to fight to the death?” Axl yawned, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking his head to clear his thoughts.

“Pretty much,” Skrah said with a mild shrug.

Axl frowned, his cellmate’s apparent indifference to almost everything around him beginning to grow more and more concerning. “How long have you _been_ here?”

“It blurs together after a while. You’ll get used to it.”

“That’s . . . comforting,” Axl mumbled.

It was ten minutes or so before the door unlocked with a low _clunk_ , a guard sliding it open and sticking their head in long enough to beckon the two prisoners outside. As he allowed himself to be ushered down the hall toward what he could assume was some room dedicated to sparring, Axl noted several more of the very realistic statues of vicious-looking sword-wielding Reploids standing at various spots throughout the halls, and while he still didn’t like the looks of them, it was at least probably enough proof that they weren’t posed corpses.

The sparring room was large and dimly lit, unfurnished save for a handful of benches, and numerous sections of the floor were marked off as practice rings and surrounded by metallic ropes. Tired-faced Reploids of all kinds milled about slowly, some standing out of the way, some sitting on the benches or the floor. Others were sparring with one another in the rings while guards, armored human and Reploid alike, stood by and watched. No one bothered to acknowledge or greet the gunner with more than a quick glance.

He glanced over his shoulder, warily eyeing the guards who paced throughout the room. “No one here’s got any spirit,” he said.

“You’re surprised?” Skrah asked as he sat down on the nearest bench.

“Disappointed, for sure.” Axl stiffened when he saw a male Reploid stumble backwards against one of the rope barriers nearby, pausing only for a moment before darting forward again. “That’s uh . . . pretty brutal for a training match, don’tcha think?”

Skrah merely responded with a disdainful-sounding grunt.

The Reploid’s opponent, a feminine-bodied Reploid wielding two sharp chakrams that arced with electricity, seemed to have no intentions of letting up as he charged back toward her. In one smooth movement, she twisted to the side, kicked her opponent in the knee to bring him to the ground, and sent a powerful surge through his body. “Whoa,” Axl said, taking in her slim figure and gold-tinted armor. “Who is _she_?”

“Her name’s Lysimachi,” Skrah answered absently, seeming far more focused on watching a different fight going on a ways away. “She’s only been here a day or two.”

“Hey, new guy!” a guard called, pointing their staff in Axl’s direction. “Yeah, you- Spiky! You’re up!”

“I hear you, I hear you.” Axl stepped over the ropes, drawing his pistol and casting his opponent an almost hesitant smile. “Uh, hi . . . Lysimachi, right?”

“Don’t hold back,” was her only reply.

“Uhm . . . okay . . . yikes!” Axl ducked a flying chakram and narrowly dodged aside as it flew back to Lysimachi’s hand like a boomerang. “Hey, slow down!” He fired several bullets, the power output carefully adjusted so as not to cause true harm, and Lysimachi lightly sidestepped each one. “Wow . . . not bad.”

Lysimachi gave a high-pitched shriek, startling Axl into misstepping, and he lost his balance with a yelp and stumbled over Lysimachi’s two sharp chakrams as she threw them once again. A moment later, he was flat on his back, fingers still curled tightly around his pistol as Lysimachi moved to stand over him.

“All right,” Axl said. “All right, take it easy. You got me.”

“You’re still armed. I told you not to hold back.”

“I’m _not_ holding back. I’m just . . . a little sleep-deprived,” Axl mumbled. And distracted, and tired as shit, and any number of other things that really shouldn’t have been any excuse.

“You’ll get yourself killed damn quick if you keep underestimating people, chickenshit.”

“Uh . . . thanks for the advice. And, uh, oh yeah-! I’m Axl!”

Lysimachi walked away without saying anything else, and Axl dragged himself out of the ring and took a seat on the floor next to Skrah’s leg. “I think she likes me.”

Skrah ‘s only response was another grunt and a roll of his eyes.

* * *

Axl collapsed on his bed late that evening with a groan, screwing his eyes shut and sitting up just long enough to undo the latches for his torso armor before flopping back down again. “I’d trade this for three consecutive days of endurance drills in a heartbeat. What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath right now, oh sweet Asimov . . .”

“You’ll get used to it. You injured?” Skrah asked, sitting down on his own side of the room without so much as a grimace of pain.

“Sore.”

“I didn’t ask if you were sore.” Skrah reached under his pillow and pulled out a white headset, the left side adorned with a small antenna and earpiece. “Hold still a minute,” he said, settling the device on his head and touching two fingers to the earpiece.

“What exactly are you doing and what is that thing?” Axl asked, pushing himself up on his elbows.

“I said hold still. And be quiet.”

Axl did as his cellmate said, and after a few minutes of thoughtful squinting, Skrah spoke up again. “Mild cracks and jolts. Nothing your auto-repair systems can’t handle.” He paused. “Though why there’s sand in your joints I have no idea.”

Axl raised an eyebrow, holding up his hands helplessly as if to convey a silent ‘what’. “All I did was perform a basic scan of your systems, relax,” Skrah said, for once looking almost mildly embarrassed- almost. “Built-in wireless transmitter; the headset just amplifies the signal and keeps me from getting a migraine every time I use it. I’m . . . a bit of a self-proclaimed hacker.”

“I can see that.” Axl stretched, trying to work some of the tightness out of his servos and biting back an additional quip of, ‘egghead’. His own self-diagnostics probably could have told him all of that, but he didn’t see any reason to complain about it and miss out on the chance for some conversation for once. “As for the sand, that’s what happens when you get buried.”

“Buried?”

“Well y’see . . .”

* * *

A whole bunch of members of the 17th unit were dispatched to an underground mine near a civilian sector. Had some live explosives detected down underground, they needed some extra backup. Zero tagged along, too. He had the day off, so I guess he had nothing better to do so he decided to follow us around. And we were all gonna go out for some fun later that night too so-

Uh . . . anyway . . .

There was already a bunch of workers around when we got there, humans and Reploids both. Our job was to stand guard inside near the entrance, just in case anything particularly stupid happened or something exploded. As it turns out, this is insanely boring when nothing stupid happens and nothing explodes.

So I started tossing my pistol around to keep myself entertained. X just ignored me, but he looked as bored as I was. Zero . . . well, Zero ignored me too until I tried to balance the pistol on my nose. Then he gave me that ‘I swear to god if you don’t stop I’m gonna slug you’ look. Heh.

But then next thing we knew, there was this super freaking loud rumbling noise the fuck out of nowhere and the ground started shaking like _crazy_. Me and X and Zero didn’t even have to think about it; not only was the quake shaking rubble loose from the ceiling already, anyone with a brain knows that earthquake plus live explosives means . . . _bad things_.

“Everyone, get out!” X yelled. “Now!” He and I started shooting rocks that were falling from the ceiling so that nobody’s skull got smashed in, while Zero herded all the workers outside.

“Go on, get out of here,” he said in that way he talks to people when he’s concerned but doesn’t wanna show it so it comes out as a growly noise. “You wanna be killed or not? _Move_!”

It was one hell of an earthquake; the ground kept on lurching so hard that we could barely stay on our feet, and every shake was one more shake that could make something explode catastrophically. An I-beam missed my head by like precisely five point two inches, and at one point a bigass boulder actually knocked X over.

Zero looked back when he heard X fall, naturally, but I waved him away. “Go, get out! I’ll help him!”

There were only a few workers left at that point, so I pulled X to his feet and gave him a shove. “Go on. I’ll get the stragglers out.”

X made his way up the slope that led outside with another small group of workers following close behind him, and I swung back around and made one last sweep. “Is that everyone?” I called.

“H-hey! Don’t leave me here!”

One last human, tucked behind a mine cart several yards away from safety. Figures, right? I ran over and grabbed their shoulder, helping them to their feet and kinda praying I wouldn’t end up having to carry them. “Easy now, I’ll getcha out of here. Can you walk?”

“I-I think so.”

“Good. Run for the entrance and don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you.”

They made a break for it, and I kept my eyes on the ceiling just above their head, shooting aside any falling objects. But suddenly this massive rock crashed down in front of me; I barely stopped in time to avoid being squashed.

“Keep running!” I told the person as they looked over their shoulder. “I’m fine!” I sprang over the rock and kept on, and to my relief, I saw them duck through the entrance.

“Axl!” Zero yelled. “Look out!”

I looked up in time to see the I-beam falling from the ceiling, and oh boy did it fall _right_ on my shoulder hard enough to knock me over, and the rest of the beam smacked down across my back.

I . . . I knew I was in trouble at that point. My shoulder hurt so bad that I couldn’t even drag myself out from under the beam, much less make it up the steep slope to the entrance, not to mention I was out of breath and disoriented as _fuck_. Everything around me was shaking and crumbling and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t go _anywhere_.

When I looked up and finally got my optics back in focus- sort of- I could see Zero holding X back, keeping him just outside of the entrance; X, being the big damn hero that he always is, was trying to run back inside and help me. “X, don’t go in there!” Zero protested. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

I . . . I’ve gone through a lot as a Maverick Hunter. Even went toe to toe with Sigma more than once, been through hell and back. But that . . . that moment where I lay helpless as everything crashed down around me . . . that was- that was one of the scariest moments of my _life_.

“Help!” I cried, and then I ducked my head and tried to shield myself with my arms as rocks and dirt and wood and steel rained down on top of me. “X, Zero, help! I-I can’t move! _Help_!”

“Axl!” X screamed. “ _Axl_!”

* * *

“And . . . that’s about the last thing I remember hearing,” Axl said. “Everything after that was just . . . dark, and heavy, and then . . . nothing.” Dark and heavy and crushing and okay wow he really didn’t want to think about this any more _stop thinking about it right this second nope_.

Skrah leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest as Axl finished his story, the gunner frowning at his lap and twiddling his thumbs idly, as if trying not to get too wrapped up in his memories. “You actually knew X and Zero?” Skrah asked after a long pause. “In person?”

“Uh, duh? Was that part not clear or something? Most Hunters kinda do.”

Another pause, and Skrah slowly sat up. “Axl, how long were you _down_ there?”

“Uh . . .” Axl’s frown deepened, and he scratched the back of his head and gave a light shrug. “I’unno. Why?”

“Because Zero died almost a hundred years ago, and X has been gone longer than that.”

“ _What_?”

But Skrah just held his gaze steadily and didn’t speak, expression as neutral as ever.

“So . . .” Axl’s eyes grew wide, a cold weight beginning to settle in his chest. “I was buried for . . . for over a _century_?!”


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh, hell . . .” Axl slowly leaned forward to rest his forehead on his palm, teal eyes wide and glazed with shock. “I guess a lot of things suddenly make more sense.”

Skrah folded his arms and didn’t speak, watching Axl with his usual stoic, unwavering gaze.

“So the Maverick Hunters don’t exist any more,” Axl said softly. “Do they?”

“No.”

“And all my friends are . . . are dead.”

“Probably. You didn’t figure any of this out on your own already?”

“I don’t . . .” Axl shook his head, his throat too tight to speak. Of course he’d figured it out. Denied it with nearly every part of his being, but he’d started fitting the pieces together as soon as he saw that Headquarters was gone without a trace.

Swallowing a wave of grief and fear all rolled into one, Axl slowly lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. “I need some sleep. I-I gotta . . . think for a while and figure all this out . . .”

“Whatever, Axl. Just be ready to fight when they call, or you’ll end up dead.”

Axl squeezed his eyes a little more tightly shut, fighting with all of his willpower to stop himself from tearing up and failing entirely, eventually pulling the pillow over his face and curling into as small a space as he could manage. He knew that he there was no way in hell he would sleep, and it was all he could do to hold as much in as possible and cry quietly for fear of waking his bad-tempered cellmate.

Before he knew it, a fist was pounding against the door, and all he could bring himself to do was groan in dismay.

“Brackets for the day are assigned,” a guard called from just outside the cell. “Be in room 7C promptly.”

Axl curled into an even tighter ball, silently hoping that if he stayed still enough, he could somehow magically turn intangible and everyone would leave him alone for approximately the next five years. Five years, however, ended up closer to five seconds when his cellmate’s fingers jabbed his shoulder blade _hard_ , causing him to instinctively jerk into a sitting position. “ _Ow_ , what the _fuck_!”

“Get up. You’ve sulked enough.”

“That _hurt_ ,” Axl mumbled, every circuit in his shoulder feeling strangely tingly, as if Skrah had jabbed his fingers directly into a nerve. “Fuckin’ jerk . . .”

“Not my problem,” Skrah said, stalking out of the room and tossing the words back over his shoulder.

Axl scowled, glancing around for something to throw at his foul-tempered cellmate. After a few moments of contemplation, however, he decided that not being able to feel most of only _one_ shoulder was enough, and there was nothing in range to throw other than his pistol and his pillow, the latter of which wouldn’t make much impact and the former of which he wanted to keep as close to his body as possible. With a heavy sigh, he gathered his wits about himself and put on as much of a steady front as he could manage before slowly getting to his feet and ambling out of the room.

He did the best that he could to meld in with the crowd and act natural, even though all he wanted to do was curl up and pretend he didn’t exist. Not knowing where else to stand, he stuck close to his cellmate, following Skrah’s lead and keeping his mouth shut as they filed into the holding area.

“Looks like you’re up against Vaile first, Axl,” Skrah said quietly, violet eyes scanning the bracket on the large screen in the center of the room. “They seem to like putting the new guys together lately.”

“Fair enough.” Axl glanced around the room warily, more than a bit unnerved by the number of Reploids jostling for space around the screen and muttering to one another uneasily. “Where are you?”

“Looks like they cut me a break today.”

“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve even seen you fight since I got here,” Axl complained, pent up emotions surging through his core as a wave of frustration that he immediately decided to take out on his cranky cellmate. “What’s up with that?”

“Audience gets bored seeing the same Reploids over and over again,” Skrah replied evenly, apparently determined not to give Axl the rise he was looking for- and by ‘rise’ Axl was really hoping for ‘anything beyond a deadpan’ at this point. “The longer you’re here, the less often you fight. And the more likely you are to live a few more days.”

Axl shook his head slowly, his brief moment of anger fading as quickly as it had come. “Well that sounds fucking _wonderful and peachy_. Enjoy your damn day off.”

“Hey. Spiky.”

Axl turned, surprised to hear Lysimachi calling out to him. “Don’t get yourself killed out there,” the fembot said, holding his gaze for only a moment before turning toward the monitor to examine the bracket.

Axl scratched his head, unsure if Lysimachi was trying to be friendly or if her words had been laced with sarcasm. “Um, thanks?”

* * *

“S’up, big guy?” Axl greeted, putting on the best cheery front he could manage and spinning his pistol on his finger idly as he faced up to his opponent.

Vaile scowled at him in stony silence, and Axl rolled his eyes and held up his hands innocently. “Fine, fine. Don’t say hi.”

“You’re dead,” Vaile suddenly spat. “This time you’re _dead_ , you little piece of scrap metal. I’m gonna kill you and then kill you some more until you’re _deader_ than dead.”

“Ah . . . nice image,” Axl said with a visibly forced smile. “Yikes!” He sprang back, and Vaile’s morningstar smashed the ground where he had stood moments before. The sight of the spiked ball on the end of the weapon seemed to spark an idea in his mind, his teal eyes lighting up with thought.

Vaile charged forward with a roar, and Axl dashed to the side with a burst from the miniature boosters on his ankles, putting distance between himself and the hefty morningstar. He made a quick adjustment to his pistol before whipping around and firing a volley of bullets, each one aimed at his opponent’s weapon hand with expert precision.

“Ow!” Vaile winced and immediately shifted his morningstar to his other hand, flexing his stinging knuckles. “Why, you little-!”

“Got it,” Axl muttered, dashing away once again to be sure he kept at a safe distance. “Now let’s end this.”

“Stop running! Stand and fight, coward!”

“Y’know, I’m getting kinda sick of the whole coward bit. But if you insist.” A grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, the gunner suddenly spun towards the wall, jumped, and fired.

The force of the bullets striking the wall created more than enough kickback to send him flying through the air at high speed, and he was careful to turn his body so that his shoulder could take the impact. Vaile was so startled by the sudden change from defense to offense that he failed to react in time to prevent the smaller Reploid from slamming hard into his midsection.

Axl immediately bounded to his feet and backed away several paces, cautious lest the impact had left Vaile still conscious. After several moments with no sign of the bulky Reploid attempting to stand up, however, Axl began to relax, though he still winced visibly as he felt a sharp ache in the shoulder he’d just used as a battering ram. “Hey, Vaile? So do your shitty shock absorbers mean I win or what?”

“Kill!”

“Huh?” Axl jerked his head up at the sudden yell from someone in the crowd, his eyes widening in shocked surprise. “Wait, what?”

“Kill!” came the screech again. More voices began to join in, until the single word had become an excited chant that echoed through the stands. “Kill! Kill! _Kill_!”

“But . . .” Axl looked down at Vaile, then back up at the audience. “But he’s . . . I _won_ , okay, there’s no need for me to . . . I don’t . . .”

Boos and insults began to blend in with the chant, leading Axl to take a wary step away from Vaile’s unconscious chassis. “I don’t have to kill someone to win a fight!” he cried. “What’s _wrong_ with you people?!”

A pair of guards soon approached to escort him back to his room, and Axl stumbled after them without protest, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What have I gotten myself into?” he whispered.

“You’ll get used to it,” one of the guards said. “You’ll have to, if you want to survive.”

It took Axl nearly an hour to stop trembling once he was back in his room. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he tried, he decided to make some adjustments to his pistol in an effort to calm his nerves. “Mm-hm . . . okay . . . yeah, that oughta do.”

“What are you doing?” Skrah asked, finally giving up on trying to ignore his cellmate’s incessant mumbling.

“Just . . . fixing something . . . there we go. This should be good.”

Skrah stood up from his bed, crossing the room to peer over the gunner’s shoulder. “Is that a gatling gun?”

“Yep.” Axl hefted the weapon onto his arm, testing the weight and balance. “If I did it right, it’ll rapid fire little spiked ball things, kinda like the one on the end of Vaile’s morningstar.”

“That- _how_?”

“It’s the weapon.” With a wistful smile, Axl allowed the gun to morph back down into a pistol. “I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I can analyze weapon data of my enemies and use it to change up the bullets. Been doing it for years, heh.”

Silence.

“What’s with the look?”

“You went from a pistol to a _gatling gun_.”

“So what? I like guns.”

Skrah settled back down on his bed with a quiet grunt of acknowledgement, rather abruptly changing the subject. “What happened to you out there anyway?”

“Whaddaya mean what happened?”

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

“Why _would_ I kill him?” Axl set his pistol aside with a frown. Nice timing, asshole, he’d _just_ started to get over his bad mood. “The fight was over; I won, he lost. What’s the point in killing someone who’s already down?”

“And what would have happened if he’d gotten back up?” Skrah pressed. “He could have stabbed you in the back.”

“I’m not that stupid, Skrah,” Axl said, his tone tightening a bit as he tried to remain patient. “I’ve seen my fair share of wars; I know better than to let my guard down.”

“This is nothing like the wars you’ve seen, Axl. Believe me.”

“Drop it and lay off, will you? I don’t want to think about it.”

“You don’t want to think about it?” Skrah shook his head, almost seeming amused- or at least as close to amused as he got considering his apparent lack of ability to emote anything beyond being a total grump. “Good luck with that, Axl.”

“Just . . . leave me alone,” Axl mumbled, grabbing his pistol and laying down on his side with his back turned. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

* * *

“This is wrong,” Axl murmured, his gaze trained on the monitor in the center of the holding room. Having the current match showing onscreen reminded him in some ways of being able to watch his fellow Hunters spar or run sims while he waited his turn, but at this point it was no more than a painful reminder of how horribly everything had gone wrong.

He sighed, turning his head to look at his cellmate and only earning himself a response of, “What?”

“Come on, Skrah!” Axl insisted. “You can’t tell me that this kind of fighting is justified!”

“And?”

“Aaaaand someone should probably . . . I dunno, _do_ something about it?”

“You’re the Maverick Hunter,” Skrah pointed out. “Go ‘do something about it’. You’re up next.”

The crowd booed loudly when Axl entered the arena, and he merely rolled his eyes and did his best to ignore them. He hadn’t exactly done much so far to make himself popular, after all, what with his complete refusal to brutally kill his opponents in cold blood; there was no sense in letting the crowd rile him up. Lysimachi, his opponent for the day, greeted him with a nod.

“Hiya,” Axl said, trying to put on a friendly smile. “Ready for a rematch?”

“Fight,” Lysimachi replied curtly. “And don’t hold back this time.”

Axl silently adjusted the settings on his pistol, lowering the power to non-lethal and activating the weapon’s data-gathering feature, just as he had done in the bout with Vaile several days ago. Lysimachi began to spin her chakrams, bolts of electricity crackling and snapping around her hands.

Before either Reploid could make a move, the dome above their heads seemed to ripple, and the environment shifted and changed, flat metal ground becoming hard, slick ice and piles of snow and glaciers wavering into existence all around them. “Huh,” Axl said, becoming distracted for a moment as he watched the room change. “Just like the sim rooms at HQ after all. Arctic sim . . .”

The gunner snapped back to reality just in time to see his opponent less than two yards away from him and rapidly getting closer, and he half-darted half-skidded backwards with a startled yelp. “Hey hey wait no one said go yet, wait-!”

He tucked himself into a ball and rolled aside of the sparking rings as Lysimachi flung both of them in his direction, allowing the momentum to carry him farther across the ice and out of the way as the weapons whipped back around to her hands like twin boomerangs. She was fast, no doubt, and light-footed enough to dodge and weave from side to side every time he pulled the trigger, even with ice under her feet.

“Damn,” Axl muttered to himself. “This isn’t fun any more . . .” As much as he loved to fight, he he also quite enjoyed _surviving_. This was no time for games.

He quickly shifted his aim downward and allowed his fire to shatter the ice underneath his charging opponent. She tripped and skidded, giving Axl just enough time to scramble to his feet. 

Yet as quickly as Lysimachi lost her balance, she had regained her bearings and flung a chakram down low to slice the ground out from under Axl’s toes in retaliation. Axl landed on his back with a thud, feeling the ice crack under his weight. “Okay _ow_ ,” he groaned, struggling to push himself up and nearly falling again when his hand slipped out from under him. “Stupid-ass ice physics.”

Lysimachi touched the edges of her chakrams together, igniting a spark that quickly grew into a net of electricity that arced and leapt about in the open centers of the rings. She jerked both arms forward, and a surge of electricity exploded from each weapon and shot across the empty air straight in Axl’s direction, the two bolts colliding in midair to weave their way into a single, much larger bolt.

Acting more on reflex than rational thought, Axl lifted his pistol, the weapon morphing into a smaller firearm as he pulled the trigger. A single beam of high-grade plasma fired from the tip, meeting the electricity midflight and holding it back steadily about four feet away from him. Axl nervously tightened his hold on his gun, and Lysimachi shifted her stance to remain light on her feet. For the moment, at least, the attacks appeared evenly matched.

This was _bad_ , this was beyond bad. The only thought running through Axl’s head was that he had to get her to _stop_ before he got zapped half to death or worse. He took a deep breath and very slowly got to his feet, being careful not to slip and keeping his aim steady despite the way his hand trembled.

“Here goes nothing!” he hissed to himself, squinting in concentration and swinging his arm to the left and then quickly snapping it back to the right. Lysimachi cried out in surprise as hot plasma stung at her fingertips, startling her into losing her grip on both of her chakrams.

But now there were no bullets to stop the surge of lightning from jolting its way across the arena and through Axl’s metallic body.

And that turned out to be a _hell_ of a surge of lightning if the way he screamed was anything to go by.

His scream gradually faded into a whimper, and he staggered, every circuit feeling as if it was on fire with excess energy. For a faint, fleeting moment, it almost looked as if he was going to be able to shake it off.

And then his legs gave out and his body hit the ground with a hard _thunk_ of metal on ice.

He was barely aware of light, delicate-sounding footsteps tapping across the ice toward him until a shadow fell across his still-sparking body. “All right,” he gasped, shutting his eyes and bracing himself for the worst. “This time you got me for real.”

“Kill that worthless coward!” shrieked someone in the audience.

Lysimachi snapped around and flung her electricity-charged chakram in the direction of the voice, the weapon hitting the dome with an audible _bang_ and causing several audience members to yelp in terror. She practically hissed with frustration as she caught the returning chakram, gathering more voltage into the weapon and rearing back for another throw.

Someone grabbed onto her arm, weakly trying to tug her back and succeeding more out of the element of surprise than actual physical effort. “S-stop.”

She turned her head, startled to see a shaky Axl standing at her side. “Don’t attack them,” he rasped. “Don’t . . . Ly . . . Lys . . .”

His feet slipped on the half-shattered ice, and he fell. And this time, he didn’t get back up.


	5. Chapter 5

A soft groan escaped Axl’s lips as his systems slowly came back online. Every circuit ached from the excess charge that still hadn’t entirely faded, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds without the room spinning in circles over his head.

Oh _man_ he was glad Reploids couldn’t get motion sickness.

It took him a few moments to make out that he was in some kind of white-walled lab, lying on his back on a metal table with wrists held down over his head by heavy metal restraints. “S’goin’ on?” he managed to rasp out.

“You lost.” A human approached him, outfitted in less armor than many of the other guards, but still wearing a sturdy metal chest piece that extended down over her stomach. “You’re lucky that your opponent appeared too shaken to finish her work.”

“Why am I restrained?” Axl lifted his head with a soft grunt, tugging experimentally at the bindings on his wrists. “I’m not gonna hurt anyone.”

“We’ve had several incidents with Reploids lashing out during examinations,” the human replied. She only seemed to be half-listening, focused more on the datapad in her hand.

Axl rolled his eyes. “Sure, way to make us sound like wild animals instead of people. Can I get your name, at least, or would you rather I just call you ‘human’?”

“Joy will do,” she said curtly. “Your systems are no longer showing red, and your auto-repairs have kicked in.”

“Noticed.” Axl laid his head back down and closed his eyes, his self-diagnostics already running to show him everything he needed to know.

“You’ll be released to your room when scans are complete. Excuse me.” Joy turned to cross the room as a small group of guards carried in a Reploid with a severed arm.

“Yeesh. Talk about bedside manner,” Axl muttered to himself. He wiggled against his restraints with a quiet grunt, trying to shuffle into a more comfortable position as best as he could with his wrists held down.

“Finally got what was coming to you, huh?” came Vaile’s voice from across the room. “S’what you deserve for being such a weakling.”

Once again, Axl rolled his eyes, in no real mood to deal with anyone’s bullshit. Particularly _that_ someone’s bullshit. “Oh, come off it, Vaile. I could take you out lying on my back.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

“Put a gun in my hand, that’s how.” Axl raised his head to cast his fellow gladiator a scowl, itching to be free of his restraints so he could put Vaile in his place. “I already beat you twice, are you that desperate for a third asskicking?”

“Sure, sure, lie on your back,” Vaile snorted. “If you’re that desperate to be killed, may as well make it easy on the other guy.”

“Go fuck yourself with the business end of a morningstar, Vaile,” Axl snapped. “I’m not in the- _owww_ . . . !”

The jolt of electricity that shot out of the ring on his wrist was low-voltage, but it felt like molten metal to his already-fried circuits. “Behave,” said another medic in the room. “Save the fights for the arena floor. And as for you, Vaile, you’ll be escorted back to your room. Your scan is complete, and you’ve only got a twisted elbow. Which is your own fault, unless I’m mistaken,” he added, moving to unlock Vaile’s restraints.

“I missed!” Vaile complained, but he obediently stood up once he was free and headed for the door with another guard close behind. “I was going to squash the little scrap and he moved out of the way!”

“Word of advice,” Axl called after him, silently fuming over the fact that someone had thought it was necessary to electrocute him when he was _already_ restrained and practically helpless. “Next time you’re going to piledrive someone, don’t miss.”

The room was quiet for a while, save an occasional whimper from the Reploid with a severed arm. “Hey. Spiky,” the second medic eventually piped up.

“What, me?” Axl lifted his head and opened one eye. “My name’s Axl. What’s up?”

“Roland,” the medic said. “Why did you stop her?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you stop your opponent from trying to attack the humans in the audience?”

“Because it was the right thing to do.”

“Really.”

Axl narrowed his eyes slightly. “Yes, really. Roland, the first law of robotics says that a robot must never harm a human being. I’ve always upheld that law.”

A pause.

“Go figure,” Roland murmured, turning away to look over a screen of data. “I haven’t heard a statement like that in a long time, Axl.” He cleared his throat quietly, his tone sharpening again when he continued to speak. “Your diagnostics will be finished in a couple of hours, and then you’ll be escorted back to your room.”

“Couldn’t really expect anything else,” Axl sighed. “Thanks, in that case.”

The gunner somehow managed to find the strength to drag himself back to his room that night, not that he had much of a choice with a guard practically breathing down his neck. When he woke up the next morning, however, he was quite literally in too much pain to move. At first, his saying so got no more than a noncommittal grunt from his cellmate, and it was only after Axl managed to fill twenty minutes with nonstop complaints that Skrah finally sat up from his bed with an unusually emphatic, “ _What_?!”

“It feels like someone poured hot slag into my armor!” Axl cried. “It _hurts_! Do something!”

“All right, all right, if it’ll _shut you up_.” Skrah put on his headset with a shake of his head, falling silent as he ran a base scan of the gunner’s systems. “Your auto-repair systems can handle it; it’s just going to take a while,” he said after a few moments, his tone blunt and no-nonsense tone as always. “Your circuits are still over-surged from yesterday, so try not to move around too much.”

“Well my diagnostics coulda told you that,” Axl sighed. “I don’t suppose you know of any way to make it hurt less for the time being.”

“No. You’re on your own.”

“Great.” Axl winced visibly as he shifted into a slightly more comfortable position. “Thanks.”

“You’re lucky you’re still alive after that mess of a fight yesterday.”

“Don’t start with me,” Axl said. “I lost, I get it. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“I’m just stating facts.”

“Yeah, well put a sock in it before I slug you.”

“That’s going to be hard if you’re in too much pain to stand up.”

“Shut it . . .”

Axl quickly realized that ‘resting’ can be very boring when one can’t move. Particularly once Skrah was sent off for several hours’ worth of combat, leaving Axl with no one to talk to- not that Skrah had provided much interesting conversation in the first place. Still, it was at least something of a relief that he hadn’t been scheduled for a match that day regardless, and the guards had allowed him a pass to stay in his room and rest.

So he stared at the ceiling and pondered.

They could end this- of that much he was confident. The hows and wheres and whens were still mysteries, but he knew they could end it. If even a few of them could escape, they could gather a resistance group; there had to be humans and Reploids alike on the outside who detested this kind of violence . . . didn’t there?

He frowned, feeling a pang of longing as he thought of X and Zero. Never in his life had he needed their advice more than he did now.

Eventually, he slipped into a doze amidst his rambling thoughts.

When he woke up a few hours later, he still felt sore, but he gathered enough strength to sit up and work on his pistol. With the data he had gained from his fight with Lysimachi, he set to work upgrading one of the old, electrically-charged weapons he’d picked up during the Eighth Uprising. “That oughta be useful,” he muttered to himself, a hint of satisfaction in his smile. The sound of the door opening caused him to look up, and he tilted his head in a nod of greeting toward his roommate. “Hey.”

Skrah didn’t so much as say a word, and Axl decided to try one more time to make some form of social interaction. “Anything interesting happen?”

When his cellmate still didn’t answer, Axl rolled his eyes and went back to work on his pistol. It was a long, increasingly awkward silence before Skrah at last piped up with, “So what are you planning?”

“Huh?”

“You’re up to something; I can see it on your face. What are you plotting?”

“Escape.”

The statement earned no more than a snort of disdain from the grey-armored Reploid. “I’m not kidding,” Axl said. “Someone has to put a stop to this . . . these gladiator games. In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t live in ancient freaking Rome any more.”

“And you plan on doing this single-handedly?”

“No . . . ?”

“Well, good luck finding any help.”

“Look, if just a few of us can escape, we can round up some Reploids and humans on the outside-”

“ _Humans_? Humans hate Reploids!” The raise in his cellmate’s voice was so abrupt and unexpected that Axl jumped visibly, but Skrah carried on, more fired up than Axl had ever seen him. “That’s the whole reason this arena exists- because humans and Reploids can’t mix! They never have and they never will!”

“Yeah, well, that’s not what I was always taught,” Axl said softly.

Skrah fixed Axl with a cold glare, refusing to say any more, and Axl wondered if his cellmate was trying to make him spontaneously combust just by staring at him really hard. “This _can’t_ get much worse,” Axl sighed aloud, flopping onto his back and splaying his arms out at his sides.

Several days after his ill-fated match with Lysimachi, Axl was reminded of why one should never _ever_ blatantly state that things can’t get any worse. It was another day spent in the holding room waiting for his match- again- and trying not to mentally gag at the fights on the screen- again.

And frankly Axl didn’t want to deal with any of it.

He found a quiet corner of the room to settle in, away from his cellmate, away from the bulk of the crowd, away from the guards. Until someone told him otherwise, at least, this was time for him to _think_. Think things through, get his brain working, start planning how to escape-

“Hey, weakling.”

Asimov damn it all.

Axl rolled his eyes at the sound of Vaile’s voice, refusing to budge from his comfortable little spot in the corner even as the taller Reploid strode up to loom over him. “S’up, fatass?”

“ _Fatass_?!”

“Well, look at all that clunky armor- you’re _huge_.” Axl held his arms out for emphasis, fixing his fellow gladiator with a look of feigned innocence. “It’s no wonder you’re so slow. It’s also kinda funny how you don’t seem to have any shock absorbers at all underneath all that junk.”

Vaile raised his weapon, only for a jolt of electricity to burst from the bracelet around his forearm and startle him out of the attack. Across the room, a human guard gave Vaile a pointed look before walking away.

“Oooooh, so close,” Axl said, his tone nothing but dry annoyance. “You almost had me that time.”

“ _Regardless_. There’s some newcomers here, just came in a few days ago. Why don’t you say hi and make some new friends?” Vaile stepped aside to usher forward a pair of Reploids, both of them slim and clad in identical snow-white armor.

“You,” one said simply.

“Yeah, what about me?” Axl asked.

“You’re different,” said the second.

“You don’t kill.”

“You protect humans.”

“And?” Axl hopped to his feet, mildly unnerved by the way the two Reploids were bouncing back and forth in their speech almost as though mentally linked somehow. He supposed it wouldn’t be out of the question for twin units. “Look, I got stuff to think about, so-”

Both Reploids lashed out and punched him square in the chest, their movements in perfect unison with one another and so quick that the gunner hardly had time to blink. Axl stumbled, his back hitting the wall and a sinking feeling growing in his stomach. “Hey now, don’t start this.”

“Protecting humans is foolish.”

“ _You_ are foolish.”

“ _You_ are both getting on my nerves,” Axl snapped, feeling a bit like a cornered cat. “Back the fuck _off_.”

Axl had gotten himself into _so_ many fights as a rookie Hunter that were completely unnecessary, and X had scolded him time and time over for every single one. All the same, Axl had, in fact, been raised as a mercenary, and there came a point for any mercenary when words just didn’t cut it any more.

He ducked as both Reploids swung at him again, promptly deciding that he was _done_ putting up with other people’s crap for a day.

Everything moved in a blur, and a few moments later, the twin Reploids both went flying backwards, Axl landing from his spin kick with a sharp skid of metal on concrete. “Serves you right for messing with a Maverick Hunter,” he hissed, turning and taking several threatening steps in Vaile’s direction. “You wanna be next?” he snapped, pleased to see his fellow gladiator looking visibly intimidated for once. “You were so confident about fighting me before, you still wanna go or what?! What about any of the rest of you?!”

_“Axl! That’s enough!”_

The familiarity of the voice registered half a second before electricity exploded from the ring on Axl’s wrist, a cry of pain escaping him as he sank to his knees with an audible _thunk_. The jolt lasted only a few seconds, and Axl dazedly lifted his head in time to see Vaile backing away as several guards approached.

“Some time in solitary will straighten this one out,” said one of the human guards. Two others twisted Axl’s arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet, giving him a rough shove.

As he limped exhaustedly out of the room, Axl was aware of all eyes fixated on him, and though his vision was blurred, he was fairly certain that most of them looked close to terrified. Except Skrah, of course, he was probably sitting in the back somewhere looking bored or annoyed. What else was new.

The guards practically had to drag him down the hall seeing as how the shock had left his legs feeling sort of like those floppy foam pool noodles that he’d seen human kids playing with now and again. Tough it out, he insisted to himself, even though his entire body sort of felt like it was on fire- again- and his head was spinning and fuzzy- again- and he was really, _really_ starting to get fed up with how much shit life was throwing at him lately. Was a nice little break too much to ask here and there?

He almost tripped when the guards rather abruptly stopped, one of them moving to unlock the door they’d reached at the end of the hall. “Get in there,” the other guard ordered, giving Axl a hard shove into the empty cell. “You can come out when you learn to behave.”

Axl stumbled forward into the dim space and fell to his knees with a grunt, immediately turning his head to throw a glare of utter defiance at his captors. An attempt to stand up ended with a boot to the spine that sent him down again, and this time he didn’t dare try to get back up for fear of being electrocuted- _again_.All the same, he kept his mouth tightly shut, putting up as much of a stubborn display as he could manage.

The door slammed shut, and then it was dark.

He sat up slowly, blinking several times as his optics attempted to adjust and feeling a strange pang of fear in his core when he registered that there was _no_ light, it was _pitch dark_ in here. Cautiously, he reached out his right hand, almost immediately feeling his knuckles hit the wall. He reached out his left in the opposite direction, only to get the same result.

Just how small was this room anyway . . . ?!

His breathing sped up just slightly, and he shut his eyes and shook his head, willing away memories of rocks and debris crashing down on him, of opening his eyes to find everything dark and weight crushing down on him and not being able to move or breathe and feeling himself shutting down _because_ he couldn’t move or breathe-

He whimpered faintly, not realizing that he’d begun to scratch at the walls in desperation. No, he wouldn’t beg to be let out, he was stronger than that, he wouldn’t beg for escape from these walls closing in on him from every side-

_I don’t wanna be trapped can’t get trapped again can’t let myself get trapped not again-_

And suddenly there was warmth. Someone was nearby and they were warm, and he could feel a gentle urging to keep his eyes closed. If his eyes were closed, he wouldn’t know if it was dark . . .

Warm, soothing and _warm_ , not like down there where it was only cold weight . . .

Gradually, his breathing began to slow, some intangible nudge encouraging him to sit back. It was in his head head. Just . . . in his head. He wasn’t trapped. Not down there. Not . . . not trapped.

_Safe_ , he told himself, trying to breathe on a count to give himself something to focus on- just like he would after a nightmare, don’t think about it, think about something else, don’t dwell on it. Slowly, he lay down on his side, still trembling in the aftermath of the scare and shifting several times in an effort to get comfortable. Needed to rest. Rest so he could fight. Needed to rest . . .

If he listened closely, he could almost make out what sounded like someone humming a soft, familiar tune . . . funny, X used to hum that song sometimes when he couldn’t sleep . . .

He didn’t know how long he slept, but he did know that he was calmer when he woke. Exhausted, but calm enough to remember to keep his eyes closed. He stretched experimentally, finding that the room seemed to be about five feet by seven feet. Good, not as small as he’d initially thought. He could move, and the air wasn’t weighted with dust and debris. Also good.

What exactly he was supposed to _do_ now was kind of beyond him, all the same, and it wasn’t long before he was, quite frankly, bored out of his skull.

His mind began to wander, somehow taking him back to the day he and Zero had met. He’d honestly been surprised _not_ to get thrown in a cell that day, much as he was sure the thought must have crossed X’s and Zero’s minds no less than seventeen times.

That day had been equal parts humbling, terrifying, and really really _cool_.

He missed being a Maverick Hunter. He really missed being a Maverick Hunter. Being a Hunter was so much more fulfilling than lying on his side in a dark tiny cell. Especially since just as that thought occurred to him, a drop of water landed on his cheek. Then another. And another.

Great, now there was a pipe leaking on his head.

_“Axl.”_

Yup, that was most definitely a leaky pipe.

_“Axl. Don’t forget everything I’ve taught you.”_

“Great,” the gunner mumbled to himself, trying desperately to ignore what seemed to be a disembodied voice murmuring into his earpiece- the same voice, he was pretty sure, that had snapped at him from Asimov-only-knew-where when he’d been on the verge of starting a fight. “Now I’m hearing things. Go me. I am so bored I’m actually hearing things.”

_“Listen to me. You know what it means to be a Hunter. And I know you’ll find a way to do what’s right.”_

“Stop talking to meeeee,” Axl practically whined, stretching his arms and legs in an almost catlike fashion. “You’re _dead_. You’re dead and I- huh?”

The stretch had caused his hand to brush against something cold and metallic, almost like a coin. Whatever it was, he promptly decided that it was his now, and he scooped it up and tucked it into his spiky mess of a ponytail to keep it concealed before resuming laying on his side and being bored out of his skull. Find a way to do what’s right, huh . . .

Hunters . . . protected people. One way or another, he had to protect everyone . . .

But Asimov dammit, when all he seemed able to do was start fights and get himself electrocuted, how the _fuck_ was he supposed to do any of that?


	6. Chapter 6

“Now behave yourself,” the guard who had come to fetch Axl from solitary said, pushing the gunner into his room a number of hours later. “Ratty little coward.”

“Whatever you say,” Axl replied, tossing an innocent smile over his shoulder as the guard shut the door and left. “Hey, Skrah.” He crossed the room to where his cellmate was standing next to his bed-

And was promptly met with a fist to the face.

“ _Ow_.” Axl rubbed the side of his jaw, squinting one eye shut and puffing his lip out in a mostly-feigned pout. “What was that for?”

“For being a goddamn moron who picks a fight in full view of the guards,” Skrah answered bluntly.

“In my defense, they swung first,” Axl mumbled. “Nice to see you again too.” He tossed Skrah the small electronic device he’d snatched out of the solitary cell, his mood significantly improved for the time being and his head clearer after his nap in solitary. “Can you tell me anything about this?”

Skrah squinted at the tiny device for a few moments, holding it up in the light to examine the circuitry. “Looks like some kind of portable trans-server, I think. Old model, too; I haven’t seen one with this kind of wiring in ages, and I’ve never seen one this small. Where’d you find it?”

“On the floor.” Axl paused a moment, tipping his head back slightly as though a thought had occurred to him. “Hey so you’re like a code geek right?”

“Yes . . .”

“So like . . . Reps nowadays are still built with internal trans-servers, right?”

“Yes . . . ?”

“Okay, so then here’s my question to you.” Axl pointed up at the ceiling, waving his hand around for emphasis. “Why hasn’t anybody just up and teleported out yet?”

“Because no one’s that stupid.” Skrah folded his arms, raising an eyebrow and giving Axl a look that almost seemed to ask if _he_ was that stupid. “Including the people in charge. They’ve got signal scramblers and repeaters through the whole place, specifically calibrated to prevent unauthorized teleports. Why haven’t _you_ tried to teleport out yet?”

“That’s what I thought,” Axl said with a nod. “And I haven’t tried to teleport out yet because my built-in system is a hot mess after being underground for a century and I haven’t had the time for a quick jaunt to the doctor. _So_ in that case, since you’re all about firewalls and scramblers and all that fun stuff, how hard would it be to program that little thing-” He pointed at the coin-sized device in his cellmate’s hand. “To bypass their signal blockers?”

Silence.

“Oh c’mon, please?” Axl asked. “I won’t drag you into anything big if you don’t want to be part of it, but will you at least do this for me? It’ll give you something interesting to work on if nothing else, won’t it? You _like_ coding shit, right? Right?”

“All . . . right . . . I suppose I can give it a look. But it’s going to take time, so be patient and don’t pester me about it.”

“Deal.”

* * *

“I wonder how this all started,” Axl mused quietly. He had been pacing the room for nearly an hour, even though he had been limping heavily ever since returning from his most recent battle. “This kind of contention can’t just pop up overnight. That wouldn’t make any sense at all . . . what do you think, Skrah?”

Skrah didn’t lift his gaze from the portable trans-server in his hands and didn’t speak, as if he hadn’t heard Axl’s question. “Skrah?” Axl repeated. “Helloooo? Anybody in there?”

There was a pause before grey-armored Reploid glanced up, blinking as though his optics were out of focus. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked you what you think,” Axl said with a roll of his eyes.

“I think that you should stop pacing because it’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“That’s not what I- y’know what, never mind.” Axl stumbled slightly and gave a hiss of pain, crouching down to clutch a hand to his ankle. “Ow . . .”

“All right, that’s it,” Skrah said, getting up and giving Axl a shove onto the bed. “Sit _down_. And hold still.”

Axl relented with a sigh, deciding that it was easier than arguing and allowing his cellmate to give his ankle a quick once-over. “You twisted it,” Skrah told him after a few minutes. “It’ll be fine by morning. If you _quit pacing_.”

“I already knew it was twisted, but fine, whatever you say, oh great and wise medic of mine. You sure do like telling me things my system scans have already told me, don’t you?”

Skrah glowered at him in silence for a moment longer before sitting down to continue examining the trans-server.

Axl flopped down on his back with a grunt, splaying his arms out at his sides and screwing his eyes shut. “Why doesn’t anybody stand up for themselves?” he all but whined.

“Because anyone stupid enough to try got killed,” Skrah snapped without looking up.

“That’s not the point! Nothing’s gonna change if no one tries.” Axl drew a long-suffering sigh. “I wish the Maverick Hunters were still around.”

“Yeah?” This time, Skrah did look up, his expression as neutral as ever but his violet eyes seething with annoyance. “Well maybe if _you’d_ fought harder alongside X and Zero, they’d still be alive and this wouldn’t have happened, would it?”

“Well, _excuse_ me for being buried in a collapsed mine for _over a goddamn century_!” Axl shot right back.

Skrah leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, apparently in just the right mood to continue pushing Axl’s buttons for whatever unfathomable reason. “So answer me this then. Why didn’t your dearest friends X and Zero bother to dig you out?”

“That’s . . . !” Axl sat bolt upright. “Because . . .” He trailed off, and his cellmate raised an eyebrow expectantly. “Be . . . because they . . .”

“I thought so,” Skrah grunted when Axl lapsed into silence. “Ever wonder if they just plain didn’t care about some unfocused kid with a gun in his hand?”

“Th-that’s not true,” Axl mumbled, but the fire had faded from his eyes. “They were my best friends.”

“Whatever you say, Axl.”

“I’m going to sleep,” Axl whispered, rolling over so that his back was to his fellow Reploid and screwing his eyes shut. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that they simply hadn’t cared. There had to be a reason- and yet no matter how many times he turned the scenario over in his mind, he never managed to come up with a legitimate answer.

Despite being mentally and physically exhausted, he spent the night tossing and turning, unable to settle his thoughts enough to slip into the peaceful hibernation his systems desperately needed.

The next several days continued to get worse as he continued to not sleep, his combat performance suffering from lack of rest and making him mentally kick himself- which _also_ didn’t help him sleep, quite honestly. Whatever optimism he’d started to feel after his time in solitary was rapidly fizzling out.

Skrah glanced up from his work on the trans-server for a moment when Axl stumbled into the room after what one could only assume had been another hell of a long match. For once, Axl didn’t offer a greeting, instead collapsing onto his bed with his back turned to his cellmate.

“You got through one more day,” Skrah said after a few moments.

“Mmhm.”

“You injured?” Skrah asked.

“Nah.”

Silence.

“What happened?”

“Mm?”

“This isn’t like you. What went wrong?”

“I’ve been lucky, y’know,” Axl sighed after a brief pause, wondering what had suddenly prompted his cellmate to start talking to him like a normal person, especially after the way they’d argued several days prior. “Lucky the guards have been letting me off. Today I was lucky my gun jammed when I pulled the trigger. Lucky the other Reploid was too scared to keep fighting.”

“Took you long enough to realize it,” Skrah said.

“I’ve always know it,” Axl murmured. “I just try not to think about it.” He closed his eyes, somehow too exhausted to be shaken by the ordeal. “I keep hoping I’ll wake up one morning and I’ll be back at headquarters. That it’s all just . . . a bad dream.”

“Yeah,” Skrah agreed quietly. “I know.”

Axl looked over his shoulder, surprised by the change in his normally cross cellmate’s tone. “You know?”

“I wish it was true. I wish I’d wake up in a hospital and they’d tell me I’ve been sick. They’d tell me it was just a fever dream.” Skrah shrugged, his expression giving little away as usual, but he didn’t seem quite as pissed off as he usually was. “But what good is false hope going to do us?”

“It’s better than having nothing at all,” Axl said. “Isn’t it?”

Silence.

“Well I think it is, anyway,” Axl added softly.

“So what’s stopping you from just giving up? What’s giving you that hope?”

“Dunno.” Axl rolled onto his back. “Every time I think about giving up, I feel like I can hear someone telling me that he’ll kick my ass to the moon and back if I don’t keep fighting. Maybe it’s just my own stubbornness. Maybe I’m hallucinating. I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re just a naive idiot.”

Axl laughed- a soft, wry sound that didn’t really hold any joy in it whatsoever. “Maybe so. Why haven’t you given up then, huh?”

Again, his cellmate responded with nothing but silence.

“Skrah?” Axl sat up slightly, his forehead creasing with worry. The grey-armored Reploid was staring at the trans-server, not making the slightest movement at the sound of his name. “You okay?” Axl asked.

Skrah still didn’t move, and he didn’t take his gaze away from the quarter-sized device in his hands. His normally sharp violet eyes were distant and out of focus, as if he was lost in his own thoughts. After several more minutes of silence, Axl lay down and turned his back again. “Sorry, Skrah,” he whispered. “I’ll shut up and let you work.”

When he still received no answer, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift into a fitful sleep.

Days blurred together into weeks, and Axl gradually lost track of time- every day the same battles, the same spars, the same crowd jeering at him from the stands, the same narrow escapes from death and arguments with the guards, and the same electric shocks bringing him to his knees. Eventually, even the sound of a guard banging on the door in the morning ceased to phase him.

“Big day,” the guard outside called on this morning in particular. “Think of it as spring cleaning. Get moving!”

“Spring cleaning?” Axl muttered, sitting up with a yawn. “I take it there aren’t enough rooms to go around?”

“Something like that,” Skrah said, tossing Axl the portable trans-server. “Take it. The coding isn’t completely adjusted, but if things go badly for me you’ll probably find more use for it than I will.”

“Thanks.” Axl tucked the quarter-sized device into his spiky auburn hair to keep it hidden. “But don’t talk as if today’s your last day to live. It’s depressing as hell.”

“Trust me, Axl. Even _your_ optimism won’t last this time.”

Axl tried to swallow his misgivings as he slowly stepped into the arena a few hours later, his cellmate’s words sharp in the back of his mind. The crowd seemed just a little more excited, cheering and jeering that much louder, and every Reploid fought with just a little more fervor.

He had no easy wins that day; each match pushed him to his limit. To make matters worse, breaks were fewer and farther between, and the environments were more varied, more difficult to navigate.

But he’d made it through marathon training sessions before, and he’d make it through this one alive too.

As his final opponent dropped to the ground in an unconscious heap, he flipped his pistol into its holster, still panting softly after the long fight. A pair of armed human guards approached, staffs in hand as usual, and Axl fixed them with a cold glare. “What are you waiting for?” one asked. “Finish the job.”

Axl didn’t budge.

“You are _ordered_ to kill,” the second guard told him.

“Why should I?” Axl muttered with a mutinous scowl.

After a few moments, the guards removed his fallen opponent and exited the arena, while Axl was told to stay put. The crowd had fallen dead silent.

“Axl, can you hear me?”

The voice speaking in his built-in communicator caused Axl to jump slightly, and he had to fight back the reflex to lift a hand to his earpiece. “Skrah?” he replied over the silent, private transmission. “What is it? And how’d you link to my signal?”

“Good, I tapped into the right frequency,” Skrah went on, ignoring Axl’s second question. “I’m watching from the holding room inside; you looked a little lost.”

“Thanks for the concern. I think.” Axl shifted his weight uneasily, ending up rocking back and forth on his heels to keep himself occupied. “What the heck is going on, anyway?”

“Likely as not based on what I saw the last few times they left someone alone out there? They’re polling the audience.”

A pause.

“Polling for . . . for what, exactly?”

“To decide whether or not you deserve to live.”

“Ah. Lovely.” Especially considering that Axl knew damn well that he’d always been quite the opposite of crowd favorite. “This is going to end poorly, isn’t it.”

“I warned you.”

Axl rolled his eyes, giving a mutter of, “Fat lot of good that did me,” before looking up and around at the crowd again. “Looks like most of ‘em are giving a thumbs up. That’s good, right?”

“Axl, I hate to break it to you, but that’s _bad_.”

“Wait what?”

“You _idiot_! A thumbs up means go ahead and _kill him_!”

Axl jumped, startled by the unusual amount of emotion in his cellmate’s normally dry tone. “Isn’t that backwards?!”

“Don’t question it, you dumbass! Just- don’t just stand there, _do something_!”

Axl backed away, drawing the trans-server from his spiky hair as the entryway door lifted open and a row of heavily armed guards began to fan out in front of him. “Looks like it’s time to put this trans-server to use.”

“Wait, the hacks aren’t finished yet! There’s no telling where you’ll end up if you-!”

“Anywhere is better than here,” Axl interrupted, taking several more measured paces back and bracing himself for what he knew was likely going to be a messy teleportation. “I’ll be back, Skrah; don’t worry. That’s a promise.”

“Axl, _wait_ -!”

Axl didn’t have time to answer, screwing his eyes shut and activating the small device in his hand before the guards could get much further- or decide to put the shock bracelet around his wrist to use. Immediately, he felt the familiar pull of the teleportation sequence, that shift almost like he was being lifted up weightlessly.

Except something didn’t feel quite right.

Halfway through the sequence, everything seemed to waver and shudder, and Axl felt a jolt of fear through his core right before something slammed into him hard, consciousness dropping away from him in an instant.

* * *

“Oh, sweet fucking Asimov, where the hell did that thing send me?” Axl groaned out once he finally began to regain consciousness. It took him a measured effort to push himself into a crouch, and once he had his balance he reached up and knocked the heel of his hand against his head to help clear the haze from his processor. Everything around him had a strange, sickly, dark green hue, and he silently wondered if that was a side-effect of a messy teleportation. The dizziness certainly was. _Fuck_ , that had hit him like a truck, teleporting through scramblers was a _really bad idea_. An organic probably would have been ripped to tiny atomic bits.

There was an eerie silence to this place. It was so still, in fact, that he could actually _hear_ the quiet movement of air through his ventilation systems, the thrum of his core, even the almost imperceptible hiss of his servos every time he shifted.

It was _creepy_.

Wherever he had landed, it certainly wasn’t Earth, and for a moment, he began to think he might still be unconscious. Or dreaming. Or both. “Where the hell . . . ?” he murmured aloud.

“You’re in cyberspace.”

Axl jerked his head around in surprise to see a long, tall shadow hovering over him and looming across his body, dim and ghostlike, the gunner responding by immediately giving a very loud shriek that was so shrill it was probably bordering on comical. He scrambled away in a panic, only for his back to thud into the nearest wall and stop him in his tracks. “Wha-what do you want?! Stay back!” He fumbled for his pistol, but the shadow continued to glide toward him undeterred, even with a loaded gun pointed at its chest. “Keep the fuck away from me, whatever you are!”

“Axl, calm down! It’s just me.”

“Wha . . .” Axl blinked, squinting hard at the dark form for a moment before slowly lowering his pistol, teal eyes widening in shock. “ _Zero_?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for the record, y'all are awesome readers. I'm just sayin'.

“ _Zero_? Is . . . is that you?”

The more Axl squinted, the more he began to make out the form of the dark being looming before him- the tall figure and confident stance, the pointed horns on the helmet, and, more familiar than anything else, the ponytail that spilled from the back of his head and ended below his waist. “What’s wrong, kiddo?” the shadowy figure said with a smirk. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“It _is_ you,” Axl breathed, allowing his shoulders to slump with relief. “Oh, man . . . Zero, why are you some kind of weird shadow thing? You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry,” Zero chuckled, holding out a hand to help Axl to his feet and giving the gunner a light hug in greeting. “That’s what happens when someone with programming like mine ends up in cyberspace. Thank my creator.”

“Cyberspace?” Axl echoed. “Is that where we are? And why everything’s, um, green?”

“Yeah. Someone once described it as the place where all data flows to an end. A parallel world where the souls of dead robots end up.”

“Wait- _dead_?!” Axl practically yelped. “You mean that fucked-up half-fixed trans-server _killed_ me?! But I can’t be dead, I promised I’d go back and save everyone, I still have to-”

“You’re not dead, Axl.”

“But you said-!”

“You’re not dead,” Zero repeated. “You still have a body.”

“I still have- _what_?”

“You’re not just a soul,” Zero clarified. “It is _possible_ for someone who’s still alive to end up in cyberspace, but it isn’t exactly easy.”

“Have you done it?”

“Yes.”

“Figured.”

Zero’s lips twitched up in a smirk, and Axl sighed, unable to help an amused roll of his eyes. “Great. So even if I’m _not_ dead it looks like my stupid teleporter still beamed me a one-way ticket to robot hell.”

“Relax,” Zero said. “I can lead you to a way out.” He turned and started to walk, lightly waving his arm for Axl to follow.

“Is . . . is X here too?” Axl asked hesitantly.

“Somewhere. He wanders around a lot, but he was resting the last time I saw him. I’m not sure exactly where he is. It’s not always easy to find someone when you want them here in cyberspace. X isn’t bad at it, but he’s kind of a special case, and well . . .” Zero laughed dryly. “I’ve died so many times that I’m kinda used to it. Even so, you’re lucky I was nearby when you landed yourself here.”

“Oh,” was the gunner’s simple reply, deciding not to comment on Zero’s complete calm at having died and come back to life _multiple times_.

Some days Axl honestly wondered what to do with the stupid blond bastard.

“Don’t worry so much, kiddo,” Zero went on. “We’ve both been keeping an eye on you.”

“So that _was_ him!” Axl cut in. “When I was in solitary, and back when I was fighting with those two twins. I _knew_ I heard him!”

“He wanted to smack you upside the head for that fight, by the way,” Zero said, lightly bumping his shoulder against the gunner’s arm. “I thought you did a nice job.”

“Heh . . . I’d expect nothing less from both of you.”

Zero drew a sigh, shaking his head and abruptly changing the subject. “The persecution of Reploids will only get worse, you know. It’s already spreading, and I’ve . . . seen firsthand how bad it can get.”

“It’s been _worse_ than this . . . ?”

“Some time ago, there was a city called Neo Arcadia that was supposed to be a sanctuary for humans,” Zero explained. “Somehow, sanctuary for humans led to mass executions of Reploids. The longer the Reploids fought back, the more innocents were killed. It took rather . . . drastic measures to put an end to the war.”

“Is that why you’re . . . well y’know, here?” Axl said, a sharp pang of emotion striking his core. It wasn’t that he’d disbelieved his cellmate’s words, but somehow, hearing it from Zero brought a fresh wave of pain over his emotional matrix.

“Yeah, you got it.” Zero shook his head, seeming to rather suddenly change the subject once again before the gunner could as exactly what those ‘drastic measures’ had been. “You know, Axl, X and I fought for a long time to bring peace. Now it’s time a new hero steps up and fights to maintain that peace.”

“Come on, Zero,” Axl said with a halfhearted grin. “I’m a kid with a gun, not a hero.”

“You’re also an S-class Maverick Hunter.” Zero stopped in front of something that looked like a ball of fog floating off of the ground at waist height. “This should do.”

“Whoa . . .” Axl crouched to get a better look at the swirling mass, his teal eyes wide with fascination. “ _Cool_. Sooooo what exactly is this?”

“It’s a rift between cyberspace and the living world,” Zero explained. “It won’t stay open for long though, so get moving. A Reploid with a body has no business in robot hell just yet.”

“Yeah, guess not,” Axl said with a soft laugh. “Thanks for the help.” He paused. “Zero?”

“What’s up?”

“Um . . . have you . . . have you seen Red around here . . . ?”

A warm smile tugged at Zero’s lips, and he clasped a heavy if friendly hand to the gunner’s shoulder. “He’s proud of you, kid. Always has been.”

“Then I guess . . . I guess that’s good enough.” Axl took a step toward the foggy rift that Zero had led him to, suddenly pausing and looking back as something occurred to him. “Oh yeah, one more thing. I almost forgot to ask; why didn’t anybody dig me out of that mine for so goddamn long?”

But at that, Zero’s smile faded, and he gave his friend a hard shove toward the rift. “I’m sorry, Axl.”

“H-hey, wait a minute! Zero!”

* * *

Axl woke up in the middle of nowhere.

But in his opinion, even the middle of nowhere, alive, was better than somewhere between life and death in cyberspace. He tucked the teleporter into his ponytail as he hopped to his feet, arching his back and stretching his arms over his head to loosen himself up. Though Zero’s clear reluctance to answer his question had made him uneasy, he decided to focus on the present rather than the past for the time being. Instead of getting distracted pondering it, he began sending codes through his navigation systems to pinpoint his location.

“Great,” he muttered to himself when he received nothing but static. “That’s just great.” He turned in a slow circle to take in his surroundings, but to his dismay there wasn’t a tree, shrub, or building in sight. After a few minutes of pondering, he decided that the best course of action would be to start walking in a straight line somewhere in the general direction of where the sun was setting.

So he set off.

He kept himself entertained by tossing his pistol high over his head as he walked, watching it flip in midair for several seconds before catching it again, passing it to his other hand, and repeating the motion. His mouth gaped in a yawn, and he stretched in between catches, longing for someone to talk to. He was _bored_ , Asimov dammit.

His thoughts drifted, and he began to wonder how Skrah and Lysimachi were faring. A dry laugh escaped him at the mere idea of the former of those two getting a new cellmate to grouse at. Even Zero wasn’t as grumpy as the grey-armored Reploid. Unless he was up at five in the morning on patrol of course, but that was a different matter entirely.

His steps slowed, eyes narrowing to a squint as he focused on the blurry shape coming into view on the horizon. Was that . . . a _city_?

Those were indeed buildings and that was indeed a city and oh civilization, sweet civilization! He raised one hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glow of the sunset and causing the metal ring around his wrist to jingle softly.

_Shit_.

He’d been so preoccupied with his location that he had nearly forgotten about the arena’s obvious marker. There was no telling if the residents of the city would be hostile or not, and Axl was well-aware that he had no identification, let alone a valid worker’s permit- or a way to forge anything believable. One way or another, he was going to have to lay low.

He waited to approach the city limits until the first stars began to appear, and even then, he walked through the streets cautiously, avoiding eye contact with the few humans who were still out as the sky continued to grow darker. All of them thankfully seemed more interested in getting home than in him.

As he walked, he passed by a lone human who had fallen asleep on a bench with a hat over their eyes, their jacket hanging over the back of the seat. As much as he hated to steal, he desperately needed a way to cover the ring around his wrist- not to mention his armor. 

After a quick look over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, Axl snagged the jacket and continued walking, pulling his arms through the sleeves as he went. “Sorry about this,” he whispered, taking his helmet off and letting his hair down as well in an effort to look as much like a civilian unit as possible.

Sure, he mused to himself bitterly. Civilian. Because all normal civilians had giant x-shaped scars over their entire face, right?

He wandered the streets for the next half hour in search of somewhere safe to sleep, finally stopping when he saw a repair shop that caught his interest. Maybe he would get lucky, he thought to himself, trying to act casual as he stepped inside. “Are you still open?” he asked the man standing behind the counter.

“Yeah,” the man replied. “What do you want?”

“I uh . . . I do repair work in another town and I’m having trouble finding some parts,” Axl replied. “Do you mind if I take a look around?”

“Well all right, but be quick about it. And don’t try any funny business.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Axl assured. He began to browse through the shelves of tools and equipment, all the while desperately racking his brain for his next move.

“Anything in particular you’re looking for?” the shopkeeper asked after several minutes, causing Axl to jump slightly.

“Oh, uh, just some circuit boards . . . some sheet metal, and a specific type of wiring. Say, you happen to know if this thing is functional?” Axl drew the trans-server from behind his ear and set it on the desk in front of the shopkeeper, hoping to distract him from asking too many questions he didn’t have answers to. For all he knew, the haphazard teleportation could have fried the device’s circuits, but he could still see it coming in handy at some point.

“This?” The shopkeeper picked up the device and turned it over in his hands several times. “A portable trans-server, huh? Where’d you find this?”

“Scrap yard,” Axl said quickly. “About a week ago. I was looking for, um, decent sheet metal and I just happened to see it on the ground.”

“Really. Can’t think why someone would chuck one of these out; trans-servers this small aren’t exactly common. And with the high turnover of scrap metal lately, I can’t imagine this would be laying around for long.”

Axl took the trans-server back with a nervous smile, knowing that the more uneasy he got, the more suspicious he probably looked- and the worse he’d get at lying to someone’s face. “Eh . . . guess I was just . . . lucky?”

“Mmm. And what kind of wiring were you looking for, now?”

Axl stiffened visibly, his brain stalling out and providing him with exactly zero of the countless types of wiring he was aware of.

“I need to see your worker’s permit,” the shopkeeper said.

“Yeah, uh . . . about that . . .” Axl tucked the trans-server back behind his ear, his nervous smile broadening as he folded his hands behind his back and took several steps away.

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” the shopkeeper added, reaching for the phone. “I _will_ call the police, Reploid; now show me your worker’s permit.”

“A-ah, no need for that,” Axl said. “I’ll just . . . y’know, I’ll just be going anyway. It’s getting late and I’m sure you want to close up, so I’ll be on my way. Nice talking to you.” When he saw the trio of police Reploids passing by the store’s front window, he wasted no time in turning the other direction. “I’ll just slip out the back door and be out of your-”

“Police!” the shopkeeper called. “There’s a rogue Reploid in here! I need help!”

“Help with _what_?” Axl snapped, throwing the words over his shoulder as he made a dash for the back door. “I didn’t do a damn thing to you!”

“Hey, stop right there!” one of the police Reploids called as they entered the shop. “Stop or we’ll shoot!”

“Leave me _alone_!” A bullet exploded at the ground near Axl’s feet, causing him to stumble several steps forward before he regained his footing. Reflexes honed from a lifetime of combat took over, and he flipped out his pistol, not taking the time to look back and instead letting his aural circuits and proximity sensors give him an approximate area to aim for.

_Crack_!

“Ow! He shot me in the arm without even looking-!”

“Serves you right!” Axl shouted. He began to zigzag as he ran, knowing from experience that it would make him a much harder target to hit- or if nothing else, make his vital areas harder to hit.

Moments later, a bullet tore through his shoulder, sending a spasm of pain down his arm. “Ow, mother _fucker_ -!” he spat out, clasping a hand to the injured joint and putting on a burst of speed.

He swerved into an alley and leapt, scaling up the side of the nearest two-story building in a few short kicks. It took a painful effort to pull himself over the edge of the roof, but as soon as he was up, he broke into a sprint once again.

Only once he was certain that he was no longer being pursued did he stop running and sink down with his back against an inactive power generator.

“Damn,” he panted, once again clutching a hand to his wounded shoulder.“Guess I zigged . . . when I should have . . . zagged. Still . . . better my shoulder . . . than my core.”

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for several minutes, calming his nerves and cooling his systems down from the hard sprint. Once he had caught his breath, he carefully lifted his hand from his shoulder to examine the damage.

The bullet had sheared effortlessly through the jacket, and the material was already becoming soaked with dark coolant. It wasn’t life threatening, but he still wished he had something to take the edge off of the pain. As it was, he could’ve used a few packets of nanites for the way all of his systems were edging dangerously close to being in need of serious repairs and recovery in general.

He shuffled around a bit until he had found a position that would keep pressure off of his wound, wincing regardless each time his shoulder so much as twitched. He _needed_ to sleep. Recharging wouldn’t give him enough energy if he needed to run again, he needed to lay down and _sleep_ . . .

Dammit . . .


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter but I couldn't decide where to break it up ENJOY THE LONGNESS.

Axl decided that he had a love-hate relationship with rain tonight.

In a way, rain was nice, because rain meant that it was dark and dark meant that it was easier to lose the seventeenth officer that had started chasing him around the city today. At the same time, however, rain was cold and unpleasant and wearing a sopping-wet tattered jacket really wasn’t any fun for anyone, even someone who couldn’t die of hypothermia.

“God dammit,” he muttered to himself, flexing his injured shoulder for a moment to loosen up before leaping up to grab onto the top of the nearest fence. He really needed to get off the streets and find a place to hide, maybe if he cut through a few backyards he could call it a shortcut. It was too dark for anyone to see him sneaking around anyway as long as he was careful.

Climbing hurt, his shoulder practically screaming in protest at having to pull so much weight upwards, but Axl willed himself onward- at least until a sudden clap of thunder startled him badly enough that he lost his balance and fell from the top of the fence, landing in the wet grass of the backyard with an audible _clunk_.

Well wasn’t this just a lovely display of heroism, couldn’t even climb a fence without making a fool of himself.

He started to push himself up, only to freeze in place when a light on the back porch flicked on, a young blond woman cracking the door open a moment later and peering around the yard uncertainly. “Sir?” she called. “Are you all right?”

Crap. “Yeah, I’m fine!” Axl replied. Stay in the house, just stay in the- god _damn_ it all of course she was coming outside why couldn’t she have just stayed in the house. “Sorry, I’m not trying to rob you or anything, I just . . . sort of got lost.”

“Goodness, you’re soaking wet,” the woman said, reaching down to take Axl’s arm. “Here, let me help you- ah!”

She practically jumped back as soon as she felt the solid armor under the sleeve of his jacket, and Axl rolled his eyes and got to his feet, trying to keep his movements slow and unthreatening. “Yeah, I’m a Reploid,” he sighed. “Still not gonna rob you. Look, don’t . . . don’t bother calling anyone, I’ll just . . . go back the way I came and you can pretend this never happened.” Even if his shoulder was aching just at the thought of climbing the damn fence a second time.

The woman didn’t speak, simply looking Axl up and down for far longer than the gunner thought was strictly necessary. “I already know I look like a hobo,” he said after an uncomfortably long silence. “You don’t have to rub it in.”

“Come with me,” the woman said at last, turning and heading back toward the house. “Come on, no sense in standing here getting rained on.”

“Uh . . . sure . . .” Axl followed at a respectful distance, his shoulders loosening slightly with relief as he stepped under the porch overhang. “I’m Axl, by the way.”

“Marie. You wait right here for a minute.”

Axl watched as Marie stepped inside and closed the door, silently wondering if she was going to call the police on him regardless while he stood here soaked and shivering. Still, maybe he could give her a chance, not _all_ humans could be complete assholes, right?

He was just about to turn and leave when Marie returned, closing the door behind herself and holding out a towel with several dark blotches on it. “It’s clean, don’t worry,” she assured when Axl simply stared at her. “My husband used it to wash the car once or twice and the stains won’t come out.”

“Oh . . . thanks,” Axl said, his voice softening as he took the towel and set about drying himself off as best as he could. “You know, you’re the first human I’ve met in ages that hasn’t screamed in panic at the sight of me.”

“Yes, well . . .” Marie wrung her hands nervously, looking the gunner up and down once more before shaking her head. “Considering your appearance, I don’t think you mean any harm.”

_You should go_.

The disembodied deep voice suddenly muttering in his ear almost made Axl jump, but he shrugged it off, continuing to dry off what he could while he had the chance. “I _don’t_ ,” he assured. “Honestly, I’m just trying to find a safe place to stay for a little while.”

“Well, I’m afraid you can’t stay here. You seem friendly enough, but I don’t know what would happen if anyone found out I was sheltering an escaped Reploid.”

Axl winced, instinctively tugging down the sleeve of his jacket to better cover the ring on his wrist.

_You need to go, Axl._

“I didn’t _expect_ you to let me stay here,” Axl said. “I haven’t been expecting help from anyone. But I really appreciate the chance to dry off, I mean that.”

_Axl, you have to leave! Now!_

The voice this time was accompanied by sharp, invisible kick to the side that made Axl flinch visibly and wrap his arms around his midsection with a pained yelp. “ _Ow_!” he cried. “Son of a _bitch_ , Zero, what the fuck was that for?!”

Marie stepped back warily, and Axl straightened up, trying to put on a reassuring smile. “Ah, don’t worry about that, it was nothing. Just uh . . . forget about it, okay?”

“Is everything alright over there?” someone called.

Marie and Axl both turned to see a lone Reploid officer watching them from beyond the fence, in clear view now that the rain had slackened off into a light drizzle. “I heard shouting,” the officer went on. “Everything okay?”

Marie frowned, and Axl scowled, now sure that Zero had been trying to warn him of the officer’s approach- even if he could’ve done it a little more _nicely_ , thank you very much. Silently fuming to himself, he ambled after Marie as she crossed the yard to the back fence. “I’m sorry for the disturbance, officer,” she said. “He fell into my yard during the storm and something startled him, I’m not sure who he was yelling at.”

The officer nodded, turning his attention to Axl next. “Can I see your identification and permit, sir?”

Axl glanced back over his shoulder, debating over his chances to make a break for it. Not likely, considering he’d have to hop another fence to get out of the yard, and he was sure the officer would be able to do so a hell of a lot faster. “I don’t have one,” he finally conceded, turning to fix the officer with a tired glare. “Extenuating circumstances.” Again, he reflexively tugged down the sleeve of his jacket, his posture tensed in preparation for a fight even with the officer on the other side of the fence.

There was a pause, and then the other Reploid nodded, stepping back and gesturing for Axl to join him. “All right. In that case, come with me, please.”

“Yeah, sure,” Axl muttered sourly. “Thanks for letting me dry off, Marie.”

“It’s no trouble,” she said. “Keep the towel, you need it more than I do.”

Axl nodded tiredly, swinging the towel over his shoulder to dry his pistol off with later and doing his best to make a coordinated show of pulling himself over the fence, even if his stomach and his shoulder both hurt like hell. “All right,” he said when he’d slid to the ground on the other side. “You got me, happy?”

The officer simply turned, once again gesturing for Axl to follow him. Axl cast one last glance over his shoulder at Marie before deciding that it really wasn’t worth a game of tag he wasn’t going to win, thank you very much Zero’s ghost, and silently trailing after the other Reploid. “What’s your name, kid?” the officer asked once they were well out of sight of Marie’s house.

“Axl. And don’t call me ‘kid’. I’m a hell of a lot older than you are.”

“Sorry. My name’s Dwight.”

Silence.

“Well?” Axl prompted. “Aren’t you gonna try to arrest me or something?”

“Yeah. I guess I’m supposed to.”

Axl raised an eyebrow, surprised to find the officer turning a corner into a concealed back alley. “You guess? Well that’s new. Every other law enforcement Reploid I’ve met has pulled a gun on me.”

“You didn’t pull yours on me,” Dwight pointed out. “Or on that young woman back there.”

“Hey, I like a good fight,” Axl said. “But I don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.” Nor was he really _capable_ of a fight at this point, but it wasn’t as if he’d ever admit that out loud- even to someone who seemed semi-friendly. “Then again,” he added, “what kind of law enforcement officer turns on his own kind when they’re in trouble?”

“Hold on a minute now.” Dwight raised his hands in defense, causing Axl to stiffen. “You think our job is easy? You think every police Reploid _enjoys_ arresting our innocent fellows and sending them to their deaths?”

“Yeah, well how do you think _I_ feel?” Axl snapped. “I’ve never done harm to a human in my entire _life_ and now I’ve got the entire population of this city after my head! My shoulder is killing me, I’m totally exhausted, I have no idea where I am, and . . . and . . .” His voice trailed off, and he leaned his head back against the alley wall and closed his eyes. “Dammit . . .”

“Sorry, Axl,” Dwight murmured. “You seem like a good guy to me.”

Axl drew in a long breath to calm himself down, though he didn’t move or open his eyes. “Dwight, why’d you become a police Reploid? You must’ve known about the prosecutions when you took the job.”

“I knew. Based on my specs, I was told that I only had a few options for openings. Arena guard, police Reploid, bounty hunter . . .” Dwight shook his head, a soft sigh rising in his chest. “Thing is, I don’t know how to fight. I wouldn’t last a day in the arena, so I had to weigh my options.”

“So why not run away?” Axl pressed, lifting his head to fix the other Reploid with a gaze that was at last far more inquisitive than hostile.

“Because anyone who runs away is killed.” Dwight’s eyes flashed with fear as he spoke. “No questions asked. It’s no surprise that many of the law enforcement Reploids have become jaded.”

Axl didn’t answer, merely taking that in for a moment before nodding mutely.

“You’re one of the lucky ones,” Dwight said softly. “One of the brave ones. I wish there were more Reploids out there with your kind of guts, Axl.”

“It’s a living,” Axl said, managing a weak smile and scratching the back of his head. “Lately I’m not sure if it’s bravery or stubborn stupidity.”

“Well, whichever one it is, I hope it serves you well,” Dwight said with a chuckle. “Anyway, go on. Get your metal ass out of here.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to do that. But if you ran off while my back was turned, now that’s another matter.”

“Not that I’d be so sneaky,” Axl added, unable to help a mischievous grin. Man, he hadn’t found a reason to actually genuinely grin in a _while_. “Hey, you think things would be any easier on me if I tried to find some kind of low-wage job or something?”

“I doubt it,” Dwight answered with a shake of his head. “If you’re an older model, they’d probably just send you to be shut down.”

“Figures. Then I guess it’s about time I started fighting back. Thanks, pal. I’m outta here.” Axl spun on his heel and quickly scaled his way up the nearest wall of the alley, giving a pained grunt as he pulled himself onto the rooftop.

“If only fighting back were so easy,” Dwight murmured as he turned to be on his way. “Good luck, Axl.”

* * *

“All right, that’s enough,” Axl muttered to himself shortly after he awoke a few mornings later. He couldn’t keep running from the police forever, much less keep engaging in physical skirmishes; he swore that their aim got better every day. Even though he now knew they were afraid of the possible consequences, he wished that a few of them were as sympathetic as Dwight had been.

He’d begun to wonder if the middle of nowhere would be safer than this city.

Moving as quickly and stealthily as possible, he made his way to the top of the tallest building in his vicinity. “Hmm . . . buildings, buildings, buildings- ah! No buildings.” His navigation systems still displayed nothing but static, but a glance at the rising sun assured him of his direction.

Axl began to jog eastward, hoping to get as close to the edge of the city as possible before the streets grew crowded. He was careful to keep a moderate pace so as not to tire himself out, lest the police send him running for his life again. He felt too sore and stiff after two weeks of fleeing and fighting to keep up much more than a light run, anyway.

“This is too easy,” he mumbled aloud, making a leap for the next roof. Really, he was surprised that nothing had gone wrong yet-

And someday he’d really learn to stop saying things like that.

Concrete and steel suddenly crumbled beneath his feet as he touched down, and he yelped in surprise when he suddenly found himself plummeting. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve landed cleanly on his feet, or at least slowed his descent with the jets on his ankles, but as worn and damaged as he was, he quickly grew disoriented as to which way was actually upright and which way was downwards. He hardly had a chance to process what had happened before his body slammed to the ground with a painful clang.

“Ow . . . ow . . . son of a bitch, _ow_ . . .” Axl could already feel cold, slick coolant dripping from half-healed wounds that had been jarred by the impact, several alerts about damage to various parts of his everything popping up in his left optic. He pushed himself up slowly, nearly slipping and falling forward when a sharp pain shot through his bad shoulder. Great, that was probably dislocated, awesome, fantastic, this was _really_ the last thing he needed right now

It was about then that he noticed the ring of police Reploids surrounding him from all sides, all of whom were armed and armored, and his go-to reaction was to flash them a grin. “Oh. Hey there.”

“Enough running,” one of them said, taking a step forward. “You’ve no chance to escape this time.”

“Some trap,” Axl said, clasping a hand to his shoulder and trying not to let his grin fall into a grimace of pain. “How’d you find me?”

“After the . . . incident you were involved in yesterday, we assumed that you would be attempting to leave the city. The eastern edge is closest to the site of yesterday’s skirmish.”

“Huh,” Axl grunted, his smile dropping into a stubborn scowl. “So you found some abandoned buildings and rigged them as pitfalls. I get it.” He slowly dragged himself to his feet, shaking visibly with the effort. “Either way, I hate leaving anything to chance.” All the same, he knew damn well that they were right. He didn’t have the energy for a chase, much less an all-out fight against so many- particularly since all of his enemies were at full strength and he was lucky to be standing up.

“Give up,” the police Reploid demanded.

“Maverick Hunters don’t give up,” Axl shot back, drawing his pistol and flexing his fingers against the trigger as if to loosen himself up.

“Maverick Hunter?” one of the police Reploids echoed. “The Maverick Hunters haven’t been around for over a hundred years!”

“Yeah, so?” Though Axl stood very still, he was tensed and poised like a coiled snake, his restless gaze wandering rapidly from one side of the room to the other.

“So you’re an outdated machine with an outdated title. You’re a very old model who won’t last in that arena and you won’t be permitted to seek employment. Come quietly and you’ll be shut down in a humane manner.”

Axl suddenly turned and leapt, bounding over the head of the Reploid nearest to the door and firing several shots behind him, grinning in smug satisfaction at the resulting yelps of pain. “Thanks for the offer, but I told you that a Maverick Hunter never gives up!”

He dashed outside and quickly shot down the sign above the door, temporarily blocking the police inside the building. Crossing his fingers that the old copy chip still worked after being inactive for so long, he took a deep breath and activated his A-Trans.

His body and circuits shifted, gradually becoming taller and bulkier, and the gunner-temporarily-turned-police-Reploid allowed himself a small swell of pride before once again setting a rapid pace for the eastern edge of the city.

No human gave him more than a mild glance or a nod of greeting, but all the same, he knew that he couldn’t hold the transformation for long. It was taking too much energy from his reserves- energy that he didn’t have to spare.

At long last, he reached the city limits, and only then did he allow his body to return to its normal form. A vast desert lay before him, with nothing in sight but flat, dusty ground. There was no telling how far it stretched.

He pressed onward, determined not to let himself look back.

His pace grew slower, his steps more uneven and his breaths more ragged, and he could feel coolant still trickling steadily from wounds reopened by his fall. He couldn’t keep going like this for long . . .

He felt his legs beginning to shake, his vision blurring for a moment before he forced his optics to realign. Shit, he was dizzy, he couldn’t stand, he was shutting down, _shit_ . . . “X . . . help me . . . it hurts . . .”

But with that, Axl lapsed into unconsciousness, his eyes slipping shut and his body hitting the flat, sandy ground with a soft _thump_.

 

* * *

 

It was a slow process of cutting through the exhausted haze in his processor before Axl finally managed to force his eyes open, shivering in dismay when the first thing he saw was green. Nothing hurt any more, and it was like all of his wounds had just _vanished_ ; it _had_ to be cyberspace again. “A-am I . . . am I dead?” he asked aloud as he sat up, not really expecting an answer.

“Not quite,” someone said quietly. “But you’re very close.”

“Huh?” Axl turned toward the sound of the sympathetic voice, squinting slightly when a warm, gentle light fell over him. “X?”

His expression brightened, and he sprang to his feet and practically pounced on his old friend, all of his fear and loneliness suddenly forgotten as he wrapped the Lightbot in a hug so tight it might’ve broken a living person’s ribs. “Asimov, I missed you,” he whispered.

“Hey, Axl,” X murmured. His warm green eyes glinted with kindness, just as they had all through his life, and he was quick to lay his arms around the gunner and give him an affectionate squeeze right back. “Good to see you too.”

Axl nuzzled his face into X’s shoulder, taking a moment to allow the familiar warmth and presence calm his rattled nerves before reluctantly stepping back. “So . . . um . . . _am_ I dead?”

“Not exactly. You’re wavering on a very fine line between life and death; your systems shut down.”

“Huh . . .” Axl looked around, taking note of the odd hue of everything around them. It was a faint, pale green, rather than the deep color he had seen last time he had been in cyberspace. “Guess you’re right. Shutting down isn’t generally good for my health.”

X sat down, shaking his head slowly and drawing one knee to his chest. “The world has changed, Axl. It was always my father’s dream, you know? All he ever wanted was for humans and robots to live in harmony, but look what’s happened.”

“I know.” Axl settled down next to him, a small frown tugging at his lips. “That damned arena . . .”

“Just thought of it gives me chills,” X murmured, a visible shiver running through his body. “Especially knowing I can’t do anything.”

“I want to end it,” Axl said softly. “I can’t stand knowing that innocent Reploids are being abused like that. People are being _killed_ , X. I can’t just leave them all to die.”

He felt his friend’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, and he looked up and tilted his head inquisitively. “That’s a brave move,” X told him. “When you could just as easily run away and find someplace to hide. Or even stay in cyberspace.”

“True.” Axl drew his legs to his chest and rested his chin on his knees. “But I can’t run forever, I kinda found that out the hard way over the past two weeks. Besides, you and Zero taught me better than that.”

X’s smile returned at that, and he gave Axl’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’ve grown up, Axl. You’re not the same wild gunslinger who was raring to shoot any Maverick on sight.”

“Hey, don’t give me too much credit,” Axl chuckled. “I still like guns, y’know.”

“Some things never change.”

“But . . . I’ll die if I stay here too long, won’t I?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

Axl fell silent at that, hunching his shoulders slightly as a thought occurred to him. Part of him was scared to know, but he might not get another chance . . . “X? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why . . .” Axl’s gaze was focused on the ground, and it was a long moment of hesitation before he could bring himself to speak. “Wh-why didn’t anyone dig me out of that mine . . . for . . . for over a _century_?”

X didn’t answer, simply turning his head away and frowning down at the ground.

“X _please_ , tell me!” Axl insisted. “Zero wouldn’t and it freaked me out and my cellmate said you guys stopped caring and . . . and I just wanna know what really happened.”

“I-I’m sorry,” X mumbled. “I’m so sorry . . .”

Axl felt a pang of worry at seeing X so upset, and after a moment he hesitantly reached out to lay a hand on the Lightbot’s back, feeling him shaking beneath the touch. “It . . . it’s okay,” Axl said. “It’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t get angry at you; I promise. I just . . .”

“Do you truly believe,” X interrupted, his voice barely audible, “that Zero and I would ever do something like that to a friend and fellow Hunter? Purposefully leave them to die buried in an underground mine? Do you think I’d just forget about someone I cared about like he was my own _son_?”

“N . . . nah,” Axl said, shaking his head and trying to smile in reassurance. “I mean, I’d sure hope not anyway.”

X drew a deep breath and lifted his head. “You remember . . . why we were sent to guard the mine in the first place, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Axl replied. “In case anything went wrong.”

“Not just that, Axl.” X shook his head. “The live explosives.”

The gunner seemed to think that over for a moment, his features paling and his eyes going wide as he put the pieces together.

“It was a miracle nothing exploded during the quake,” X went on quietly. “Or during the collapse. We sent for an excavation crew, but they . . . said it was too dangerous. The ground was unstable, and the explosives were still hot, and . . .” He paused.

“And?” Axl prompted softly. “And _what_?”

“Axl . . .” X closed his eyes. “We lost your signal. All the scans and radar systems just . . . stopped picking it up. We thought you were dead.”

“You thought . . . but . . . I wasn’t.” Axl shook his head. “I remember you screaming for me, and then everything was just . . . dark and quiet and heavy. I think . . . maybe I went into a low-power state, and that‘s why my signal went out. Maybe . . .” Oh Asimov dammit now he was thinking about it again, he was thinking about how dark and cold it had been down there and how he’d been crushed and _please for the love of everything stop thinking about it_.

“You were _awake_ down there . . . ? Axl . . .” X didn’t hesitate for a second to turn and draw the gunner into a tight, protective hug, his green eyes softening with concern. “I-I didn’t know . . .”

“I’ve . . . I’ve never been through anything like that,” Axl whispered, nestling himself against X’s chest and finally feeling as though he could let his guard down. He was always safe with X, right? Of course he was safe with X, _everyone_ felt safe around X. Well, everyone who wasn’t a vicious deadly Maverick, anyway. “I-I’d rather face both Sigma _and_ Lumine by myself ten times over than go through that again.”

X was quiet for a few minutes, gently rubbing Axl’s back as he’d done so many times in the past, before continuing to speak. “A few months after that, Zero sealed himself in order to permanently delete the virus from his systems. I kept speaking with the excavation crews about possible solutions, but they always said it was too dangerous. They weren’t willing to risk so many civilians’ and workers’ lives on an operation to save a Reploid who may not even have survived. And then the Elf Wars began and . . .” He sighed. “I . . . I’m sorry, Axl. I-I wanted to run back and help you when you fell, but-” 

“No, X, don’t blame yourself. You would’ve just wound up buried too; that’s why Zero held you back. It was just that . . . when I asked Zero the same question, he didn’t answer and he looked so scared, and that . . . that scared _me_. I’ve never seen him look at me that way . . .”

“Neither of us ever stopped blaming ourselves,” X murmured. “I wish we would have tried harder to save you back then. And you have no idea how happy I was to find out you had survived.”

Axl leaned back from the hug, drawing his pistol and giving it an idle twirl. “I . . . I want to go back, X. I’m not just gonna give up and leave all those Reploids to suffer.” He tightened his fingers against the gun’s trigger. “I want to fight.”

X began to laugh softly, causing Axl to fix him with an indignant near-pout. “What? What’s so funny?”

“I haven’t seen you look so stubborn since you were first trying to convince me that you should be a Hunter,” X chuckled. “I guess that means there’s nothing anyone can say that will change your mind.”

“That’s right,” Axl said with a smirk. “Maverick Hunters don’t give up.”  
X smiled, getting to his feet and holding a hand out to help Axl up as well. “You should go before it’s too late.”

“Yeah,” Axl agreed quietly. “Thanks, for . . . for everything, and . . . and stuff.”

“And stuff,” X agreed, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “We’re both watching over you, Axl. Now go. Hurry and get yourself repaired.”

“I know. I will.” Axl paused for a moment. “Do . . . do I really have to take all this on by myself?”

“Of course not,” X replied softly. “You’ll find help if you look hard enough, I know you will. Stay strong for me, okay kiddo?”

Axl felt his vision beginning to blur and shift and fade, but he could still make out the calm, gentle smile on X’s face, even as everything went dark.

* * *

When Axl woke up, he was instantly slammed into a world of pain.

But pain came with one very important reassurance- pain meant he was _alive_. Alive and not in cyberspace and not _dead_.

And that meant he could still fight.

Cringing at every movement, he dragged himself to his feet, his optics flickering in and out of focus each time he blinked. For one faint, fleeting moment, he looked back in the direction he’d come, wondering if he could find someone in the city who would be sympathetic enough to help him.

And after only a few seconds of thought he turned and began to limp off in the opposite direction.

He knew that time was short. He could feel vital fluid still dripping steadily from his wounds, and his systems were all but screaming with exhaustion. It became a struggle just to keep his eyes open, much less stay standing.

Then he saw the house.

“No choice,” he mumbled aloud, too tired to wonder why there was a house out in the middle of the desert, miles from any city. It wasn’t like he had much to lose, after all; he’d die if he didn’t get help, and if they turned him in he’d probably die there too. Or maybe it was a heat haze and he’d die anyway because it wasn’t really real.

He staggered unevenly toward the small house, his legs threatening to give way beneath him as he leaned heavily against the wall and pressed the doorbell. Well at least the wall felt solid, that was probably a good first sign that it wasn’t just a cactus masquerading as some fucked-up mirage of a house.

“Coming,” called a voice from inside. The door opened with a soft click, and a human peered outside, their eyes widening at the sight. “Who’s- holy shit . . .”

“Please,” Axl managed, his voice cracking with exhaustion as he spoke, “h-help . . .”

Before the human could open their mouth to respond, Axl’s systems shuddered on him and forced another emergency shutdown, and he collapsed on the doorstep with a thump.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh shit what's this A BRAND NEW CHARACTER?! HOLY SHIT!

Axl moved his head slightly as his systems began to boot up one by one, and he was more than a little bit surprised when the first thing he felt was a soft, fluffy object shifting beneath his cheek. Funny . . . that felt kind of like a pillow . . .

He cracked one eye open, both startled and pleased to find that the soft thing under his face actually _was_ an actual real live pillow. His servos still ached and he was still exhausted, but he no longer felt as if his energy draining minute by minute, no longer like his body could shut itself down at any given time. He sat up with a grunt, once again feeling a wave of surprise when he saw his ragged jacket folded neatly next to his pillow, his pistol sitting in plain view on top. “Where the hell . . . ?”

“Hey there,” a voice greeted softly from the doorway.

Axl turned his head, vaguely recognizing the human whom he had seen moments before collapsing. Though they appeared to be a bit wary, they had a friendly smile on their face. “I wasn’t sure if you were gonna make it. How do you feel?”

“Uh . . . halfway alive. Who are you?”

The human crossed the room and took a seat at a desk that was covered in various papers and bits and pieces of mechanical devices. They were of medium height and a fairly average-looking build, neither distinctly masculine nor feminine, with pale brown hair that hung down to their shoulders. “My name’s Xan. This is my home, specifically my lab. Sorry about the mess; it may look disorganized, but I swear I know where everything is. Most of the time.”

“Oh . . . heh, don’t worry about it. My name’s Axl.”

“Ah! I thought so.” Xan stood up and began looking through the bookcase on the far wall of the room, pulling out a thick, old-looking history text and flipping to the middle of the book. “Here it is. Prototype of the new-generation Reploids; former member of Red Alert. Possesses the ability to copy the forms and skills of other Reploids and wields a pistol. Fought alongside X and Zero as a Maverick Hunter, starting in the seventh Maverick uprising.” They flipped the book closed, a warm smile gracing their features. “Never thought I’d meet someone like you. I studied under Cerveau years back, and he told me stories of the legendary heroes, but it’s still different to see someone like that in person.”

Axl had no idea who Cerveau was, but he didn’t think it was important enough to deviate off to for the time being. Mentally noting to brush up on recent history in the near future, Axl shuffled into a slightly more comfortable position and turned so that he could lean back against the wall, starting up a routine system scan to see how he was faring.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” Xan asked with a chuckle.

“Should I?”

“You saved me from three infected Reploids, remember? You shot one in the foot, one in the leg, and one in the shoulder.”

“ _Oh_! That day! Right, right, you were the one who _wasn_ ’t screaming.”

“If . . . that’s how you want to remember it, I suppose, then yes. So . . .” Xan sat back down at their desk. “You escaped from the arena, huh?”

Axl’s eyes grew wide, and he instinctively moved a hand to the metal ring still locked around his forearm. “Uh, yeah you see, I- that is-”

“Relax, Axl. I’m not gonna turn you in or anything; I promise. You can trust me.”

“Ah . . .” Axl chuckled nervously, still finding himself covering the ring with one hand all the same. “That’s . . . good. What’s the deal with that place, anyway? Like . . . how? Why?”

“You don’t know?”

“Not really. Long story, but let’s just say I’ve spent the last hundred years or so a bit out of the loop.”

“The place you were in is just one of many,” Xan said, leaning back in their chair and closing their eyes. “Things have always been a little shaky between humans and Reploids, but I’m sure you know that much already. Were you around during the Neo Arcadian uprisings?”

Axl shook his head, looking utterly baffled. Hadn’t Zero mentioned something about Neo Arcadia . . . ? “Never heard of ‘em. I’ll read up on it.”

“Well, your good friend Zero put a stop to those,” Xan went on. “But things were still a little tense, small uprisings and conflicts here and there. A number of years ago, there was a huge gang war, human faction versus Reploid faction. Close to nobody survived it, the city’s been abandoned ever since, and any Reploids who _did_ make it through the fighting were put down shortly after.”

They frowned, crossing one leg over the other and opening their eyes to look up at the ceiling. “Groups of humans started using it as an opening to call Reploids dangerous. Reploids argued back, a lot of them asked why they should be blamed for something they personally didn’t do. It escalated and escalated, law enforcement and government got heavily involved . . . protestors started parading around saying that Reploids caused all the wars, Reploids are dangerous, Reploids need to be punished, blah blah blah. Some have even tried to gain support by making a big show of ‘saving’ humans from ‘rogue Reploids’, but they’re all either unjust or staged. It still works though.”

“And the police?”

“Scared or corrupt, one.” Xan shrugged slightly. “Hard to really say at this point.”

“ _Dammit_ ,” Axl hissed, curling his hand into a fist. “This isn’t what they fought for.”

“Come again?” Xan asked.

“X and Zero,” Axl went on. “They gave up everything they had for peace and now _this_.” He shook his head angrily. “I’m gonna end it. I’m gonna take a stand against this. Maverick Hunters don’t just give up.”

“I haven’t seen a Reploid with spirit like that in a long time,” Xan murmured.

“Comes with the occupation. Speaking of things you probably haven’t seen in a long time . . .” Axl reached up to pull the teleporter from his spiky hair, only to flinch and drop his arm with a yelp. “ _Ow_ , dammit . . . !”

“Easy,” Xan warned. “Your shoulder was damn near wrecked beyond repair. I gave you a few doses of extra nanites in addition to general repairs, but it’ll be days before you’re anywhere close to a hundred percent, maybe weeks for your shoulder.”

“Y-yeah, I got that,” Axl said breathlessly. “Sure feels like it.” More carefully this time, he reached up with his other hand and drew out the small device he still had tucked away, tossing it across the room into Xan’s palm. “Anyway, how much do you know about portable trans-servers?”

“Now that’s something,” Xan murmured as they looked the quarter-sized device over. “Never seen one like this. Does it work at all?”

“Sorta. But the coding might be a little fucked. I kinda had someone help me modify it and then used it to teleport through some scramblers designed to make people _not_ teleport and it . . . might’ve . . . sorta caused me to temporarily die, so . . .”

“That’s . . . not a good thing. I’ll have a look at it later.”

“Thanks.” Axl shifted around to get more comfortable, settling down on his back and folding his hands on his stomach. “I think I’m gonna rest for a bit.I still need to recharge and assess how my systems are doing.”

“I'll leave you alone, in that case. Let me know if you need anything.”

As friendly as Xan’s smile was, the uncertainty was still plain on Axl’s features. Not all humans were alike, right? There were good and bad Reploids, so there had to be good and bad humans too. Like Marie, he reminded himself. Marie hadn’t been so bad. And Dwight, too . . .

Maybe . . .

* * *

“This is a pretty soft lab table,” Axl noted, his gaze not leaving the history text he’d been skimming while Xan was working on more repairs to his injured shoulder. “Ow!”

“Hold still,” Xan insisted. “Unless you want me to accidentally dislocate something. Anyway, it isn’t a lab table; it’s an old hospital bed.”

“Really?”

“Yep. The only difference I see between Reploids and humans is metal and skin. An injured Reploid deserves to be just as comfortable as an injured human, don’t you think?”

“ _Owww_!”

“I _told_ you to hold still!”

“Holding still isn’t in my dictionary.”

Xan rolled their eyes, falling silent for a moment as they crossed the room to pick a few tools out of their desk drawer. “So you really knew X and Zero in person?” they said as they got back to work.

“Sure did,” Axl replied half-attentively, still not looking up from his reading. “Y’know, this book clearly wasn’t written by someone who was actually in the war. It’s totally biased.”

“What were they like?” Xan asked, ignoring Axl’s complaints about the accuracy of the book.

“Brave,” Axl said after a moment’s thought. “X was so calm and fatherly, Zero was always kinda . . . stoic, I guess. But they were both insanely fierce in battle, especially when they fought side by side.” He lifted his head and smiled slightly. “I’ve never known two people more inseparable.”

“Do you miss them?”

Axl’s smile faded at that, and he quickly shifted his gaze back down to his reading material as if to hide what he was feeling. “Yeah. They . . . they taught me a lot. Not just how to fight, but way beyond that.”

The human frowned, their gaze soft with curiosity as they worked to delicately splice two split wires back together. “They were your mentors. It . . . it . . . must’ve been hard for you. Losing them, I mean.”

Axl didn’t answer, merely shaking his head and flipping to the next page of the history text. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said after a few seconds. “Sorry.”

The gunner spent the next several days catching himself on recent history, seeing as how he had nothing better to do while he was stuck in bed. By the fourth day, he had already made his way through the Elf Wars and the violence caused by Neo Arcadia and Dr. Weil, and now he was laying on his stomach while he scanned through the texts for any information on how the arenas had come to be.

**_Donnelsbury Gang War_**

_For much of the time since the fall of Neo Arcadia and the destruction of Dr. Weil, it seemed that humans and Reploids had found peace. Despite some small, isolated incidents, the efforts of Dr. Ciel and the heroic actions of Zero had brought an end to the Reploid wars._

_However, gang activity continued to be a problem, particularly in small, industrial cities such as Donnelsbury. The criminal underworld of Donnelsbury was largely controlled by two rival gangs: the Death Road Ministry, and the Chemical Outfit, the former being composed solely of human members, and the latter of Reploids._

_After years of contention, the rivalry between the two gangs finally came to a head in the Donnelsbury gang war. There are no records to confirm which group fired the first shot. As innocents were caught in the crossfire, civilians began to take sides, human blamed Reploid, and Reploid blamed human. The gang war became an all-out power struggle between man and machine, as the city’s council declared the Reploids to be an uncontrollable threat._

_Ninety percent of the Reploid population of Donnelsbury was killed during the violent uprising, and eighty percent of the human population suffered the same fate. Those Reploids who survived were deemed Maverick and shut down._

_The city of Donnelsbury remains unpopulated to this day._

Axl looked up in surprise when he felt something land lightly on the bed next to him, blinking a few times as his optics readjusted from focusing so intently on his reading. “Wha . . . well, hello there.”

The ‘something’ that had perched itself next to him was a small, cream colored cat with wide, bright blue eyes, its fluffy tail swishing back and forth and its tufty ears pricked with curiosity. “You finally decided to say hi, did you?” came Xan’s voice from the doorway.

“Looks like it.” Axl held out a hand, allowing the cat to sniff his fingers before he gave it a scratch under the chin. “Hey, wait . . . is this a _robot_?”

“Yeah. His name’s Mink.”

“Wow . . .” Axl ran his fingers through Mink’s soft fur, eliciting a purr of delight from the synthetic feline. “Talk about a lifelike build. But, uh, Xan . . . ?”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you build a robotic cat?”

“Well . . . because . . . I get lonely.”

When he saw the piteous expression on the human’s face, Axl couldn’t help but do something he hadn’t done in quite some time- he began to _laugh_. A full laugh, no less, not just a weak chuckle. “What do you expect when you live miles and miles from any kind of civilization?”

“So you _can_ laugh,” Xan murmured. “I was worried that you were programmed without the capability.”

“Nah, I used to laugh a lot more. Guess I’ve been a little down lately is all. While we’re on the subject, why do you live in the middle of a desert?”

“It was the only way I saw to distance myself from that blasted arena,” Xan explained with a sad shake of their head. “I don’t have to face the mandatory attendance of matches; I don’t have to turn in any Reploid who so much as shows their face. I can work from home doing programming and whatnot, so I came out here and built myself a house.”

“In that case, can I ask a favor of you?”

Xan raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“Can you help me get this thing off?” Axl pleaded, holding out his wrist and indicating the metal bracelet that was still locked around it. “It itches like _hell_.”

This time, it was Xan’s turn to laugh aloud, their warm brown eyes glowing with amusement. “No problem. It was probably rendered inactive once you put some distance between yourself and the arena’s wireless signals.” They kicked aside a book and a box of scrap metal and picked up a pair of pliers from the ground.

Axl slowly pulled his arm back, teal eyes widening slightly. “Um. You’re not gonna wrench my hand off or anything, are you?”

“ _No_ , Axl, I was just going to rip apart the ring. I don’t see any reason to leave the thing in one piece, unless you want to keep it for a souvenir.”

“Not really.”

“Then trust me and just hold out your hand. I won’t hurt you.”

Axl hesitantly reached forward, and after a moment’s examination Xan took hold of the ring with the hefty pliers, the metal giving way beneath the tool almost immediately. “Ah. Knew it, the latch mechanism hasn’t changed,” Xan said, giving the pliers a squeeze and easily crushing the bracelet. Axl yanked his wrist back, and the device ripped free with hardly a struggle. “There! Told you it was no problem.”

“Heh . . . thanks.” Axl looked down when Mink headbutted his hand, unable to help as smile as he scratched the synthetic feline behind the ears. “Hello pushy cat, I like you too.”

“You know,” Xan said as they chucked the mangled ring into an overflowing trash can, “you still aren’t sleeping well.”

“I know. And it’s not because I’m in pain or anything; I mean, you fixed me up pretty damn well. It’s just . . .”

Xan plucked the robotic cat from Axl’s lap, allowing him to scramble up to settle on their shoulder. “You’re lonely.”

“M . . . maybe, yeah . . .”

“You were even restless while you were unconscious,” Xan added, giving Mink a scratch under the chin. “You kept calling out for X and Zero. And another name, too . . . Red, I think.”

Axl fell silent at that, all of the relaxation in his expression dropping in an instant.

“Turn around,” Xan murmured after a brief pause. “I want to check over your shoulder.”

Axl did so, but his smile and the sparkle in his eyes had faded. He barely twitched at the little jolts of pain throbbing through his joint as Xan carefully checked the circuit alignment and the connections between the wires. “Xan?” he said at last.

“Hm?”

“Why’d you save my life?”

“You asked for my help.”

“But . . . didn’t you stop to think? What if I was some crazy, dangerous Maverick?”

“Hold still. Yes, I did consider that, but I would’ve accepted the consequences, either way. Didn’t _you_ consider that I might be an unsympathetic human who hates Reploids?”

Axl didn’t seem to have an answer for that one, and after a moment’s silence, Xan continued. “Besides, what was I supposed to do? Leave you lying on my doorstep and watch you die? You looked _scared_ , Axl. Scared and desperate. I’ve seen too many Reploids with that look in their eyes; I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”

“That sounds like . . .” Axl swallowed, fighting down a wave of grief. “Like something X would say. But what do you mean you’ve seen Reploids with that look in their eyes?”

There was a long silence as Xan picked up a small tool from the ground. “Hold still,” they repeated at last. “Don’t forget, Axl, you saved me. It’s only fair that I return the favor.”

“Thank you,” Axl whispered. That Xan had so clearly skirted his question was something he decided to file away to worry about later. Right now, he didn’t want to think about it. “For everything. I . . . I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

“It’s nothing. All I did was fix you up.”

“No.” Axl closed his eyes. “You’ve done far more than that.” But even as he spoke, he felt a small twinge of fear knot itself in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot . . .


	10. Chapter 10

“Dammit, Axl, slow down!”

“You speed up, X!” Axl laughed. For the first time in months, he was in his element, running along the highway with his mentor sprinting at his side, the wind whipping through his spiky ponytail and making his eyes sting. “Maverick dead ahead!”

“Slow down and pay attention to your superiors, kid!” X said, though there was amusement in his scolding tone. “Stick close, we’ll take this together!”

Everything was okay.Everything was _fine_ , it had all been a bad dream, every second of it, and everything was going to all be okay and he and his best friend could kick some Maverick ass and then go home and drive Zero up the wall until he dragged both of them to bed. “Ready when you are!” Axl said, swelling with confidence as he raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

_Click_.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. His pistol wasn’t supposed to click, it was supposed to _bang_.He pulled the trigger again, and then once more, and all he got was two more clicks. “X, I need to back off and regroup!” he called. “My gun’s jammed!”

He turned his head, feeling as if the coolant in his systems had turned to ice when he found that his mentor was no longer at his side. “Hey, where’d you go?!” he cried, but the Lightbot had seemingly vanished into thin air. “X, come back!”

His gaze shifted back toward the Maverick, teal eyes widening in terror as it began charging power into the laser cannon on its back. “X!” he yelled over the whir of the Maverick’s weaponry. “X, I need you, please come back! _X_!”

“Axl!”

The gunner jerked awake from his nightmare with a jolt, immediately gasping in pain and doubling over as he clutched a hand to his aching midsection. Dream, it was a dream, he was fine, he was safe, even if he found himself blindly fumbling to grab onto his pistol for comfort. “Axl?” the voice that had woken him repeated softly. “Hey, it’s just me . . .”

Axl lifted his head, blinking several times to bring his optics into focus. “Hi, Xan,” he greeted, his voice no more than a quiet, groggy mumble. “Sorry I woke you.”

“It’s nothing,” Xan said with a shake of their head. “You all right?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Axl replied, his tone strengthening slightly as his systems began to come out of their sleep-cycle properly. “Just . . . just a nightmare.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I just . . . sat up too fast. I’m fine.”

“Axl . . .” Xan shook their head gently. “This isn’t right. Your systems are healing just fine, but . . .”

Axl shut his eyes tightly, turning his head away and willing his emotional matrix to settle. “I’ll be . . . okay . . .” It wasn’t as if even the best engineer could just take a wrench and tighten a few bolts and magically fix his grief.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Xan reached out a sympathetic hand, but Axl leaned away as if wary of being touched. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know.” Axl’s voice was weary, and somehow he looked more like a tired old man than a determined ex-Hunter. “Maybe the facts are catching up to me.”

“Facts?”

“That I’m a prototype who’s over a hundred years old. That I’m still just a kid, mentally anyway. That I’m in way over my head and I’m utterly alone.”

“Well, I suppose some of those things may be true,” Xan admitted. “But you’re not alone. I’m willing to help you. And don’t forget, you _are_ an S-class Maverick Hunter.”

Axl slowly opened his eyes, and this time he didn’t shy away when Xan lightly clapped him on the back. “Get some sleep, okay?”

Only once Xan had left the room did Axl slowly lay back down on his side, his hands balled into fists. “All right, you two,” he whispered. “You said you’d be watching over me, right? So are you there right now or not?”

After a few minutes of silence, he began to relax, his fists unclenching and a faint, worn smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah yeah, Zero, I hear you. You’ll kick my ass to the moon and back if I don’t keep fighting. I know. Just don’t kick me this time, jeez . . .”

He closed his eyes, some of the tension falling from his shoulders. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, I get it. Thanks.” Hopeless or not, he reminded himself, Maverick Hunters weren’t the type of people to simply give up _._

The gunner managed a few fitful hours of sleep before giving in and heaving himself out of bed, stretching to work the soreness out of his waist and running a routine scan to check that nothing had sustained any damage from his sudden jerk back into the land of the waking. “You’re up early,” Xan said when the gunner emerged from the lab and ambled into the kitchen. “Manage any more sleep?”

“A little,” Axl said, wrinkling his nose at the sharp scent of the coffee brewing near the sink. “Got restless.”

“You’ve got a look on your face like something’s on your mind.”

“I’m tired of sitting around,” Axl said, flexing his stiff shoulder and giving his human friend a halfhearted smile. “If I’m going to take on this mess, I’d better get to training.”

“Well . . . if you insist,” Xan agreed. “There should be plenty of room in the front yard. But be careful, okay?”

“Sure will,” Axl said, his teal eyes full of bitter determination in spite of his otherwise-cheery expression. “I’ll be fine.”

Xan settled on the porch to watch while Axl practiced, taking a toolkit and the portable trans-server with them, along with their cup of freshly brewed coffee. Axl warmed up with a few easy sprints and stretches, making sure that his servos were loosened up after spending so much time in bed. “Okay, Zero, let’s see if I can still do this routine of yours,” he muttered to himself, scanning the empty yard for a few moments. “Xan, mind if I borrow this tree?”

“Um, go ahead. Just don’t maim it. Or kill it. Or knock it over.”

“Right, I’ll do my best.”

Without another word, Axl turned and made a flying leap, springing off of a tree branch and showering leaves into the air. He used the small jets on his ankles to spin himself around and sniped down the fallen leaves with several quick, precise shots, following that by tucking himself into a ball and flipping several times in midair before landing on the ground.

Immediately, he bounded to his feet and dashed for the tree again, scaling to the top with the grace of a cat and pushing off with all of his strength. As he landed this time, he rolled to soften the impact and carry his weight along to get him back on his feet, never once pausing for more than a second.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Xan warned without looking up.

“Can’t stop,” Axl panted. “Old routine Zero taught me a long time ago. Builds speed and strength but you gotta keep moving.”

“Fine,” Xan said, “but if you dislocate something again, I _will_ hit you.”

Axl leapt and started to spring off of the tree branch once again, only for the wood to shatter under his weight this time and sent him tumbling to the ground. “Ow! Okay either that wasn’t as sturdy as I hoped, or I’m a lot heavier than I remember.”

“You alright?” Xan called.

Axl was back on his feet at once, simply waving a hand in reply before climbing rapidly up the tree yet again and springing off of the top, slowing his descent by firing his pistol straight down. As soon as he landed, he flipped into a handstand, carefully balancing on one arm and starting in on a set of push-ups. “You’re nuts,” Xan commented with a shake of their head. “As is the one who came up with this routine.”

“Maybe so. But I already-” Axl switched to balance on his other arm, wobbling slightly at the pressure on his healing shoulder. “Feel better than I have in days so- whoa there . . .”

“Think you oughta do that with _both_ arms?”

“Nuh-uh. I’ll get more out of it doing one at a time. It’s loosening up the servos in my-” Axl made a loud noise of surprise as his arm suddenly gave out, and he collapsed to the ground with a thump. “Ow.”

Again, Xan shook their head in exasperation.

Axl stood up, taking a few seconds to catch his breath and regain his bearings before climbing the tree once again, grabbing onto a thick, sturdy branch near the top with both hands. He bounced a few times to test his weight and make sure this branch wouldn’t snap like the previous one, nodding in satisfaction let go with one hand and began doing one-armed pull-ups. “This isn’t so bad . . . heh, not compared to the drills I had to do as a Hunter anyway.”

As made the switch to his weaker arm, he felt a sharp pain shoot through his bad shoulder, enough to make him gasp and reflexively open his hand as several vital servos locked up. He fumbled to reach up and steady himself with his other arm about a second too late, his fingertips just grazing the wood as he felt himself plummeting. “Aw, crap-!”

Xan glanced up from the teleporter at the sound of a rather heavy _thud_ , blinking and slowly raising their eyebrows. “Axl . . . ?”

The gunner cringed visibly and made no attempt to stand up, instead rolling onto his back and clutching a hand to his throbbing shoulder with a whine. “O-owww . . .”

“Inside,” Xan sighed, setting the trans-server aside and getting to their feet, leaving the door open as they headed into the house. “I’ll get my tools.”

“C . . . coming,” Axl mumbled, biting back another noise of pain and slowly pushing himself into a sitting position. _Dammit_ this sucked, he was a _Hunter_ , he shouldn’t be letting a shoulder injury slow him down, much less stop him from training. If he’d been training with his unit, he wouldn’t have given a second thought to pushing through it until he couldn’t stand up any more- or at least until X got exasperated and grounded him from the sim room.

But he _wasn’t_ training as a Hunter right now, he reminded himself as he got up and ambled inside to settle down where Xan could take a look at his shoulder, grabbing a map to study while the human worked. He wasn’t acting with his unit, he was acting as one Reploid desperate to change the minds of what felt like a million people.

Fighting solo was _hard_.

“I _told_ you to be careful,” Xan said, snapping the gunner out of his thoughts and causing him to jump slightly. “Hold still.”

“Guess I took it a little too fast,” Axl said with a clearly forced smile. “And I _am_ holding still this time.”

Xan rolled their eyes and, seeing as how the gunner wasn’t wearing his helmet, set one of their tools down and punched Axl squarely in the back of the head. “Ow! Heeeey, what was that for?!” Axl whined.

“Did you think I was kidding when I said I’d hit you if you dislocated something?”

Axl sighed softly, too worn out to be cross about the fact that now his head hurt along with his shoulder. “So how’s the trans-server coming?” 

“Not bad; I’ll need to test it on something non-sentient soon. It’ll go faster if I _don’t_ have to spend an extra two hours fixing your dislocated shoulder- _again_. And _that_ will go faster if you _stay still_.”

“Guess that’s fair . . .”

“Okay, wires are set.” Xan laid their tools aside, shifting to place their palm against Axl’s shoulder. “Now don’t move.”

“No problem, this is my favorite part,” Axl muttered, shutting his eyes and bracing himself.

Xan struck the gunner’s shoulder sharply with the heel of their hand, forcing the joint back into its socket and earning a loud yelp from their patient. “There,” Xan sighed. “Now to set it properly . . .”

For once, Axl stayed very still, studying the holographic map that he’d laid out in front of himself. “So it looks like there’s an arena in this city . . . this one here . . . two in this sector . . . where do I even _start_ . . .” Just trying to piece it together in his head was proving to be an impossible task, much less _doing_ anything about it.

“That should do,” Xan said several minutes later. “Now this time _don’t strain it_.”

“I gotcha,” Axl replied without taking his gaze from the map.

“You promise?”

Axl blinked and turned his head, surprised to see that although Xan’s expression was stern, their gaze was soft and gentle with worry. “Okay,” he murmured, looking back down at the map. “Okay. I hear you.”

“Good. I’m gonna go watch some TV; you get some rest.”

The gunner made a half-attentive noise of agreement, most of his focus on the holo-map in front of him. Plans. He needed plans. Planning had never been his strong suit. Thinking things through in _general_ had never been his strong suit.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring and thinking and staring and thinking some more and coming up with absolutely zip in terms of useful ideas. A loud shout of disgust from the other room was what finally jerked him out of his thoughts, his optics needing several moments to refocus after staring at one spot for so long. “Xan?” he called, popping his head out of the lab and nearly tripping on the cat that pressed up against his ankles. “Something wrong?”

“Damned arenas,” Xan snapped, shutting the TV off and practically chucking the remote control onto the coffee table. “Once a week they screen the matches live on TV. Every channel is a broadcasting a different location; there’s no escaping this shit.”

“Oh.” Axl lowered his eyes. “That.” Right. Of course. The thing he’d just spent probably two hours or so pondering over and still had no answers for. That thing.

“You know, it’s not like you have to fight this alone,” Xan pointed out when Axl lapsed into an awkwardly long silence.

“Yeah,” Axl muttered. “Yeah, I do, Xan.”

“No, you don’t.” Xan sat up from where they had been laying on their back on the couch, a frown tugging at their lips. “I’m perfectly willing to help.”

“And how much help would you really be?” Axl retorted, sounding more snappish than he had intended.

“You won’t find out unless you give me a _chance_ , Axl.”

Axl turned away, a scowl tugging at the corners of his mouth.

After a few moments of silence, Xan spoke up again. “Is it because I’m a human?”

Axl’s scowl immediately dropped into a more pained frown, guilt hitting him in the stomach like one of Zero’s spin kicks. “N-no, no, that has nothing to do with it. It’s just . . .”

“Just what?” Xan prompted quietly, raising an expectant eyebrow.

“Never mind,” Axl mumbled. “I don’t . . . I don’t wanna . . . just forget it.”

* * *

Axl rolled onto his back, slowly opening his eyes and cursing his restless mind for not allowing him to get any sleep. The room was dark save for a slight glow from the full moon outside, and for a long moment, he lay still, allowing his optics to adjust low lighting.

Someone had to end this.

He sat up and drew his pistol, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the familiar, cold metal of the gun’s barrel. Honestly, he had no idea if he could do this alone, but he had to try, dammit. He had to do _something_ besides sit on his ass and sulk.

He hopped to his feet with a sigh, only for a quiet, inquisitive trill to stop him in his tracks and cause him to look down. Two wide, gleaming eyes gazed back up at him unblinkingly, and he couldn’t help but crack a smile and reach down to scratch the synthetic cat behind the ears. “Shh, Mink. Stay quiet, okay?”

Mink opened his mouth and mewed- a faint, pitifully squeaky sound. “Shh!” Axl insisted, only for the cat to give another plaintive little cry. “ _Shush_! Please, little guy, keep quiet. I have to leave.” Axl reached for the portable trans-server that Xan had left on the desk, only for a soft paw to come to rest against his hand.

“Aw, don’t look at me that way,” Axl whispered. He scratched the robotic cat under the chin, and Mink purred and rubbed against his hand lovingly. “I’ll miss you, okay?”

He slid open the window as quietly as he could and slipped outside, tucking the trans-server safely away in his spiky ponytail. “Sorry, Xan. I gotta to do this my way.”

With a grim scowl, he shut the window and turned his gaze toward the vast, darkened stretch of desert. “Wish me luck . . .”


	11. Chapter 11

Axl murmured something in Russian under his breath, carefully observing the movements of the guards from his hiding place near the arena’s nearest rail line, likely used to ferry in new arrivals and audience members. Thankfully, the station appeared to be quiet, and with no one working the ticket booth, he had a good vantage point as long as he kept a low profile with his Stealth Mode at the ready. Not too many guards outside, all Reploids making long, wide sweeps, and the door was being watched. Simple enough, he thought, tightening his hold on his pistol and swallowing back whatever nervousness was still lingering in the back of his throat.

One of the guards yelped when he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, spinning around and leveling his stun-gun in the general direction of any possible attacker. “Hey-!”

To his surprise, however, there was no one there.

“Be on your toes,” he told a fellow guard. “Something’s going on and I don’t like it. I’m going to go take a look by the rails”

“Roger.”

Axl snickered quietly, giving his pistol a twirl on his index finger and ducking down to wait. He pinpointed his target’s position easily, needing only his proximity sensors and the sound of footsteps, waiting until the guard was less than a foot away from him before lashing out and dragging him behind the ticket booth.

He silenced the guard’s startled yelp by clamping a hand over his mouth, a swift jerk around the neck knocking his systems offline. Now it was merely a matter of not making himself too obvious, something he’d practiced time and time over as mercenary and Hunter alike. His body shifted to take on the appearance of the guard he had shot, and once he was sure the coast was clear, he slowly emerged from his hiding place.

“Everything clear over there?” one of the other guards called as he approached.

“All clear,” Axl replied, adjusting the tenor of his vocal processor as he spoke. “Must’ve been a bug or something.”

No one else paid him any mind, and he cast the other guards no more than a mild nod of greeting as he walked past them. He tried to put a little bit of a confident swagger in his step, racking his brain for a place on the inside where he could hide out. As he made his way along, his gaze settled on a human guard who was unlocking a cell using some kind of wireless fob.

It was a risk to his cover, but a necessary risk all the same. There _was_ a place he might be able to hide if he could just get _in_ there- and if he could manage a little smooth talk once he was inside. Rubbing the back of his neck uneasily, he approached the human guard, hoping that acting sheepish would make him seem sympathetic and unthreatening. “Uh, hey. I kinda . . . misplaced my key, can I borrow yours for like ten minutes?”

The human turned toward him, thankfully looking more irritated than outright hostile. “Reploids, honestly,” she sighed, holding out the small fob. “Take it. Just leave it on one of the hall shelves when you’re done.”

“Er, thanks.” Axl took the key with a nervous smile, turning and quickly slinking off before the woman could change her mind.

He kept his gaze focused straight ahead as he walked through the halls, trying not to betray his unease. The room was in this hall, he remembered that much, but was he even still . . . ? No, no, he had to be alive. Of course he was alive, he was too stubborn to not be alive. Wasn’t he?

No choice but to take his chances.

He swiped the fob over the keypad and set it down on the shelf just outside, hating to leave it behind but knowing that it would be a risk to his cover if he didn’t. Taking a deep breath and mentally crossing his fingers, he slid open the cell door, feeling a wave of relief when he was immediately met with a familiar, stoic mask and violet eyes that were smoldering with undisguised hatred. “Do you need something from me?” the captive Reploid grunted.

“What? Don’t you recognize me?”

“Is there a specific reason I should?”

“Oh?” Axl deactivated his copy chip as he slid the door shut behind him, crossing his arms over his chest with a familiar grin as he let his body and circuits slim down and shift back to normal. “How about now?”

A pause.

“ _Axl_?!”

“Wait wait don’t punch me!” Axl yelped when Skrah stood up. “And keep your voice down!” He held up his hands for a moment, searching out a wireless signal and bringing up a silent, encrypted comm line with the other Reploid. “I can see you haven’t changed much; you look as grumpy as ever.”

“What the hell are you _doing_ here?” Skrah hissed, though he seemed to relax just slightly as he connected to the silent comm. “You should’ve stayed as far away as possible!”

“Well . . .” Axl’s grin didn’t fade, though he looked on-edge, as if he was still praying that the taller Reploid wouldn’t rat him out. “I made a promise.”

Skrah sat back down on his bed, shaking his head and lifting a hand up to rub his temples. “You Asimov-forsaken dumbass. You’d live longer if you’d learn to just lay low instead of constantly sticking your neck out.”

“Probably, but living longer isn’t my primary concern.” Axl sat down on the cell’s other bed, scanning the room for a hidden spot and resigning himself to using his Stealth Mode with a sigh. It’d take a lot out of him, but he didn’t have many options at this point. “How often to the guards come and linger in here?”

“Almost never, they only come by to notify me when I have a match. I’ve been here long enough that they know I won’t cause trouble. And don’t even _think_ about dragging me into any of your halfassed escape attempts.”

“I _won’t_. Look, I have a plan . . . sort of . . . but I still need time. Just let me hide out here for a while, okay?”

There was a long silence, and the longer it stretched, the more Axl swore his core was going to race so hard it’d jump right out of his chest.

“All . . . right,” Skrah agreed at last. “I guess there’s no harm as long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t stir anything up.”

“Fair ‘nuf.” Axl flexed his shoulder, cringing slightly at the realization that it had grown stiff again since he’d left his friend’s house. “Has anything changed?”

“Not much. Just that.” Skrah nodded toward the twenty-inch holo-screen on the wall. “They broadcast every match and every sparring session on that now, in addition to handing out bracket assignments and wake-up calls. You can’t just hide in bed and pretend to ignore it any more, even if you’re injured, and there’s no more gathering in a crowded room to mill around waiting for assignments.”

“What made them think to do that?”

“There was another fight,” Skrah replied. “Worse than the one you got in. Lysimachi snapped and electrocuted four or five Reps before the guards shocked her down. After that, they finally decided that putting a bunch of Reploids that don’t like each other in a small room and making them wait to kill each other was a bad idea.”

“Took them long enough,” Axl said, though he was surprised that Lysimachi had been the one to snap. “Funny . . . she’s an electrical unit, I’d think her core would have a heavy-duty surge protector or something . . .”

“Beats me,” Skrah said with a shrug. “Exposition aside, my turn to ask a question.”

“Fire away.”

“Your shapeshifting ability. I’ve seen a lot of different Reploids here but I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“That wasn’t exactly a question.”

“Fine. How?”

“Close enough.” Axl shrugged mildly, looking pleased that his cellmate was apparently actually trying to sort of maybe make small talk for once. “Nothing special- just a standard-issue copy chip. Lots of new-gen Reploids had them, at least until Sigma’s virus reared its ugly head. Mine’s just about the oldest model out there though, so it’s not perfect. Takes a lot of energy.”

“Ah, I see. Well, I suppose nothing is really perfect.”

Axl detected a subtle hint of something in Skrah’s tone dry- scorn, perhaps, or maybe skepticism. It was hard to tell when the stupid idiot _still_ appeared to be damn near incapable of actually emoting something beyond grumpy. “H-hey, don’t worry!” Axl said, managing another of his signature grins. “This whole mess will be over before you know it.”

* * *

“I’ll be back in a while,” Skrah sighed a few hours after waking up the next morning. “Sparring.”

“Cool. Suppose I’ll uh . . . stay here and watch. See ya.” Axl stretched out on one of the beds so that he could clearly see the holo-screen, deciding that now was as good a time as any to start trying to pick out a possible resistance group.

He carefully observed each Reploid who fought- their skill, their speed, and particularly their drive and spirit. “He might do,” he mused to himself. “Maybe, but- no . . .” The Reploid’s shrill cry of terror and desperate, panicked flailing made Axl shake his head. “Too timid. Gave up too quick, dammit, you were doing good . . .”

“You there! Get up and spar!”

Axl’s eyes widened with interest, and he sat up to rest his weight on his elbows. “Oh boy . . .”

“Don’t think about giving us any lip. It’s been a while since you’ve fought; you need the exercise before you rust. Get up and move! Now!”

As Axl watched, Skrah wordlessly got to his feet and stepped forward to stand before a short Reploid who looked like they couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. “What are you doing?” Axl murmured, realizing that he had never actually watched his cellmate fight before. “You don’t even have a weapon . . .”

The grey-armored Reploid sprang forward without so much as a hint of warning, slamming his fist into his opponent’s chest with an audible noise of knuckles striking metal. He didn’t even pause before letting his weight carry him into a spin, pale blue plasma blades humming out of his gauntlets on each elbow as he made several quick, precise slashes at his opponent’s torso and arms.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Axl breathed out, eyes widening in something between horror and amazement. The smaller Reploid had barely been given a chance to move, and while he knew that he shouldn’t have been surprised, that didn’t make it fun to watch all the same.

He frowned, settling down more comfortably to resume watching the rest of the matches. “Maybe,” he murmured to himself. “Maybe . . .”


	12. Chapter 12

It was a few more hours before Skrah returned, and Axl gave him several minutes to settle in before piping up over their silent comm and mentally bracing himself for an _interesting_ conversation. “You’re a pretty skilled fighter, yeah? I hadn’t seen you take a swing before today.”

“You have to be skilled if you want to survive,” Skrah replied bluntly.

“So . . . plasma blades, huh?”

Skrah blinked as if confused, and Axl cracked a lopsided grin. “What?” he said with a shrug. “A little conversation never hurt anyone, y’know.”

“Uh . . . yeah,” Skrah replied after a few more moments of hesitation. “The original design was meant to have metal blades, but they were too clunky.”

“Huh . . .” Axl tipped his head, leaning back against his pillow lazily and crossing one leg over the other. “Fair enough. Heh, Zero always was a fan of plasma blades; he always said he liked being able to cut something open and burn its insides in one swing.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Nice. I’m pretty practiced in hand-to-hand combat since every Hunter was trained in it, no questions asked, but I think I’d break my fists if I punched anyone too hard.”

“It takes a certain technique. I . . . I guess I don’t have to worry about that as much because my knuckles are made of a shatterproof alloy that my builder engineered, same as my armor is. I’d still rather not punch a concrete wall if I can help it though.”

Axl began to chuckle quietly, earning a halfhearted scowl from his cellmate. “What’s so funny?” Skrah said. “I wasn’t joking, you know.”

“I know, I know.” Axl folded his hands behind his head, more relaxed around the other Reploid than he’d ever felt. Amazing what even a short casual conversation could do. “I’d like to fight you someday. It’d be an interesting match.”

“Mm.”

“I mean it,” Axl insisted. “You’re a great fighter. You just need to learn to lighten up a little. If your opponent won’t fight back, there’s no reason to go all out.”

At that, Skrah’s expression hardened, and he turned his head away sharply. “You’re talking about the Reploid I was fighting earlier? It’s not my problem if an opponent is too cowardly to defend themselves.”

Damn. Not subtle enough. “That’s not the point, Skrah.”

“Then what _is_ your point? If you show mercy, all you’re doing is hesitating, leaving yourself vulnerable, and endangering your own _life_.”

“I _know_ that,” Axl said with a sigh. “I know there’s risks, but it’s just . . . the way I was taught.”

“You’re a fucking idiot, Axl.”

“Shut up,” Axl snapped, quickly losing both his patience and whatever sense of relaxation he’d started to feel. So much for casual . . . “It won’t kill you to be nice to someone once in a while! You should try it sometime!”

“You’re still a fucking idiot,” Skrah muttered. “Do what you want; just leave me out of it. I’m going to bed.”

Axl stayed up for some time longer even after Skrah laid down, gazing at the ceiling and swinging his leg idly as he allowed himself to drift into thought. He could hear his cellmate shuffling and shifting restlessly, and that concerned him. Skrah was usually out like a light and sound asleep.

After about two hours, Skrah finally went silent, and only then did Axl sneak across the room to sit down on his knees at his cellmate’s bedside.

Just how long, he wondered, had the grey-armored Reploid been here? How long, that he’d become this cynical and outright jaded? “You’ve hardened everything about yourself just to survive,” Axl whispered aloud. “But . . .” He started to reach out a comforting hand but quickly drew back, worried that the touch would cause Skrah to wake up and lash out at him. In fact, he was surprised that Skrah hadn’t woken up already to yell at him for talking. “Fear isn’t weakness, y’know.”

He remembered, years ago when he was a rookie, the way he used to boast, loudly insisting to his mentor that he wasn’t afraid to take on any Maverick, no matter the size or the danger. “You _should_ be afraid, Axl,” X had scolded him. “Lives are at stake, including yours. If you’re conscious of fear instead of pretending to ignore it, you’ll be more cautious, whether you realize it or not.” In spite of his tone, a smile had touched his lips then. “And you _won’t_ keep rushing headlong into danger and spending every other day in medical.”

“Sure thing, X,” Axl murmured with a faint smile of his own. “I remember. Of course I’m scared. For myself and for everyone else here. Stay strong for a little longer, okay Skrah? I’m gonna end this.”

He pushed himself to his feet and crept back over to his bed to lay down, unaware of his cellmate opening his eyes to stare up at the ceiling as soon as the gunner’s back was turned.

* * *

“Okay,” Axl said several days later, mentally going through a list of able-bodied Reploids. “What about that staff-wielder- the one in the green armor?”

“Worthless,” Skrah grumbled. “Glare at him and he’ll run off.”

“Well, how about that redheaded guy Lysimachi was fighting yesterday?”

“Too friendly with the guards. He’d probably do a headstand on the spot if they told him to.”

“Y’know, Skrah, this isn’t helping much and you’re starting to piss me off.”

“I keep telling you, it’s hopeless. They make sure that every Reploid who walks in that door is broken, mentally and physically. None of them are interested in anything but survival.”

“You don’t _get_ it, do you?” Axl snapped, momentarily forgetting about their private comm and speaking aloud as he got to his feet to glare down at his cellmate. “Nothing will change if no one stands up for themselves and _tries_! Has every single one of you just given up?!”

Skrah stood up as well, and Axl was surprised at the visible tension in his cellmate’s posture. “I don’t want to see any innocent Reploids _die_ because they’re trying to take part in one of your stupid idealistic schemes!” he shot back, ignoring their comm signal just as Axl had.

“So you’d rather just let yourself and every other Reploid here fight each other day after day for no cause whatsoever?” Axl pressed, unintimidated even though Skrah was a few inches taller than him standing at his full height, not to mention a threatening picture in general between the spikes on his armor and the intensity in his dark violet eyes. “You’d rather watch them _die_ in this worthless arena than see them stand up and fight for freedom?!”

“Shut up, alright?! Just shut up, you damn coward!”

“Who’re you calling a coward?! At least I’m _doing_ something! You’ve just resigned yourself to die here!”

“My actions are none of your business!”

“It’s the business of a Maverick Hunter when innocent lives are in danger!”

“I said shut up, you ancient piece of _scrap metal_!”

Without any further warning, Skrah launched himself forward, slamming into Axl’s torso and tackling him to the floor. “Oh, _now_ you wanna stand up for yourself, huh?” Axl practically snarled, swinging around and jabbing his elbow at Skrah’s chin, only to miss and ineffectually nail him in the chest instead. “You wanna fight or what?!”

“What does it _look_ like I want?! Hugs and fucking kisses?!”

For several minutes, they fought and struggled on the floor of the room, kicking and punching and practically screeching aloud in fury. Axl wound up with several cuts and scrapes from the spikes on Skrah’s forearms, and he was honestly lucky that his cellmate was in too much of a blind rage to think straight enough to use his plasma blades.

“Stupid weak piece of scrap!” Skrah spat, his fist meeting Axl’s jaw with a sharp crack.

“Bull-headed pessimist!” Axl shot back without skipping a beat, too furious to even be aware of the new pain in the lower half of his face.

“Idealistic idiot!”

“Cowardly dumbass!”

That seemed to strike a nerve for the grey-armored Reploid, and in a sudden burst of strength, he slammed Axl to the ground chest-first and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back. “Don’t you _dare_ call me a coward!” he yelled. “Say it again and I’ll rip your arms off and shove them down your throat!”

“ _Stop_ that!” Axl said, his voice raising in a near-shriek. “Qu-quit it; that’s my bad shoulder! Stop-!” A jolt of dismay- and _pain_ , that was a _really_ sharp pain- shot through him when he felt the joint snap free of its socket, several wires and servos tearing with the action. “ _Ow_!”

“Hey!” called a voice from outside the room. “What’s going on in there?”

Both Reploids froze in place, having gotten so wrapped up in their outrage that they had failed to realize that the noise was bound to attract some attention. “Oh, son of a bitch,” Axl mumbled. With a grunt of effort, he shoved Skrah off of his back and got to his feet, backing a few paces away from the door.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Skrah snapped.

“What _I’ve_ done!? You attacked me _and_ dislocated my shoulder! What’d you expect me to do- lay on the floor and cry?!”

“You’re the advocate of mercy, not me!”

“Oh _fuck off_ , that’s not even remotely-”

The door slammed open, and an armed and armored guard stepped into the entryway, several more in view behind them. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

“Aw, man . . .” Axl clasped a hand to his shoulder with a grimace, grateful that the sight of the guards seemed to have at least temporarily subdued his cellmate. “Xan’s gonna _kill_ me if these guys don’t first.”

“We’ve been given orders,” the head guard said, one hand pressed against their communicator. “He’s of no use at the moment; we don’t have any open spaces for him right now with the new arrivals on their way. Kill him.”

“Shit,” Axl muttered, swallowing back a pang of fear at the sound of the guards’ shock-staffs whirring with power.

“Wait a moment,” another guard said. “Wait a _moment_! Now I recognize you!”

“Um . . . c-come again?” Axl said, taking another wary step back and hoping that he could use this as a chance to stall for time.

“You’re that prototype,” the guard went on. “The prototype of the new generation Reploids. The kid who fought with X and Zero, right? Ancient thing, aren’t you?”

“What a way to be remembered in the history books,” Axl muttered sourly.

“No matter,” said the head guard. “Our orders are to kill. Move in.”

Axl grumbled a swear under his breath in Russian, reaching back to tug out the small electronic device that was still hidden in his ponytail and silently reminding himself that this could either save him or kill him. Then again, he was going to die a horrible electrical painful death if he stayed here anyway, so he supposed it was probably worth the risk.

“What the _fuck_ , Axl?”

Axl started, surprised that his cellmate had spoken up- especially in the presence of the guards. “I can’t _believe_ you,” Skrah went on, his violet eyes still seething with cold fury. “What the fuck were you _thinking_? What, you thought just because you used to be a Maverick Hunter and you knew X and Zero that you could just walk in and say a few heartwarming words and everything would turn out?!”

The guards had stopped and lowered their staffs, startled by Skrah’s outburst. “But . . . Skrah, I . . .” Axl wasn’t sure if he was shaking because now he actually _was_ intimidated by his scary-as-all-hell cellmate, or because having everyone suddenly bringing up X and Zero’s absence to his face was hitting way too hard for comfort. Or both. “I . . . I only wanted to help . . .”

“Get out,” Skrah whispered. His voice gradually rose to an uncharacteristic shout as he spoke, and his hands were clenched into shaking fists. “Get the fuck out of my sight before I kill you myself! You’re not anyone’s hero, you’re a dumbass, idealistic, halfassed prototype kid with nothing but a gun and a halfassed plan! You don’t even deserve to call yourself a Maverick Hunter, Axl!”

Axl recoiled sharply, both from the weight of those words and from the undisguised hatred in Skrah’s normally stoic violet eyes. His hand tightened around the portable trans-server, and once again he was reminded that it could either save him or kill him. “I . . . I’m sorry,” he whispered. “To you and Lysimachi and everyone else. I’m . . . I’m sorry . . .”

He took one more step back and activated the trans-server, and as Skrah lunged toward him, his world blurred and faded to black.


	13. Chapter 13

Axl awoke in the deep, dark green of cyberspace.

He didn’t stand up, or even try to move for that matter. Instead, he merely crouched on the ground on his hands and knees, his shoulders trembling and a wry grin tugging at his lips. So his lucky streak had finally worn itself out, had it? Save him or kill him. Those were the only two possible outcomes of trying to teleport through scramblers and firewalls, weren’t they?

“Kid with a gun, wasn’t it,” he mumbled to himself with a laugh that held no joy. “Halfassed prototype with a stupid halfassed plan . . .” He closed his eyes, some part of him wanting to curl up and break down over it all and the rest of him feeling too worn out and defeated to even do that. “Fuck, Skrah was right . . . I’m a miserable damned failure, aren’t I?”

“Giving up so easily, kid?”

Axl jerked his head up, his eyes widening and his twisted smile falling away to shock. “Come on, Axl,” the speaker went on, the voice still so familiar even though Axl hadn’t heard it since the Seventh Maverick Uprising. “You’re telling me you’re just gonna sit here on your ass and mope when there’s a fight waiting for you out there?”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Axl sat back with a soft thump, looking around for the source of the voice and frowning when he saw nothing but blurry, indistinguishable green. “I can’t do shit on my own, I proved that much already. And no one there will listen to a word I say.”

“You think that cranky cellmate of yours wasn’t listening, huh? Why do you think he got so miffed at you?”

“Uh . . . I was kinda under the impression it was because he hates my synthetic guts, considering he threatened to kill me if I didn’t get out of his sight.”

The disembodied speaker scoffed, and Axl lowered his eyes, looking a bit like a child who had just been scolded by their parent. “This isn’t like you, kiddo,” the speaker went on. “What do you think X and Zero would say if they saw you sulking like this, eh?”

“I can’t _do_ anything, Red!” Axl jerked his head up, holding his hands out helplessly and fixing the empty air in front of him with a pained glare. “I _tried_ and it just landed me here for the third time! I’m not a hero, I’m no one’s savior, I’m a prototype kid with a gun in his hand who thinks he knows what he’s doing and keeps fucking shit up when it turns out I actually _don’t_ know what I’m doing!”

There was a pause, Axl panting softly from his rant, and when Red didn’t speak for a minute or two, Axl began to worry that he’d given up and left. “Axl,” the disembodied voice said at last, “since when has being a prototype or a kid _ever_ stopped you from doing what you wanted, whether you were supposed to or not?”

“W-well . . . never, but-”

“Did it stop you from being the best shot in Red Alert?”

“No, but it-”

“Did it stop you from being a mercenary?”

“ _No_ , it’s just-”

“Did it stop you from being one of the best damn S-class Maverick Hunters anyone’s ever seen?”

“No,” Axl said softly. “No, it didn’t. Red, I’m _scared_. I don’t know how to help people who are too jaded to _want_ my help.”

“They’re not,” Red insisted. “They’re scared, same as you are. You can get through to them if you’re willing to work for it.”

“Well, I guess I have always been stubborn when I want someone to listen,” Axl admitted, rubbing the back of his neck and picturing one very exasperated-looking Lightbot. He slowly got to his feet, feeling an invisible force give him a gentle nudge forward. “But what if I can’t do it? What if I just end up failing again?”

Another pause, and Axl swore that Red- or what was left of his data and soul- was grinning at him. “What did you do every time you failed when you were with Red Alert, eh?”

“Um . . . get mad, whine a lot, occasionally kick things, get even madder when someone told me ‘no you can’t’, and then get back up and do it again except better?”

“That’s the merc I know.” Somehow, Red seemed to be guiding the gunner somewhere specific, his intentions becoming clear when Axl caught sight of the wavering glow that he knew was characteristic of a rift between the two worlds. “Now get your ass moving, kiddo.”

“Yeah yeah.” Axl managed a weak chuckle, shaking his head and looking back over his shoulder with a small, warm smile. “Thanks, dad. I’ll make you proud, okay? Promise I will.”

Red laughed, a familiar, sharp, bark of a laugh that Axl hadn’t heard in countless years. “Come on, Axl, like you haven’t done that already. Now scram. There’s people out there who are counting on you.”

“I’m going, I’m going!” Axl felt an old pain in his chest at the thought of leaving his adoptive father figure again, but he pushed it down as he stepped toward the rift, reminding himself of his goal, of everything he _needed_ to do. Sulking in cyberspace wasn’t going to help _anyone_ , right?

He was still mulling over it as everything faded to black, and it felt like no time at all before he was blinking awake back in the living world. Groaning with the effort, he slowly pushed himself into a crouch, cringing at the sharp pain in his shoulder and swaying for a moment or two longer before his optics stabilized. He was in the middle of nowhere again, but he had expected nothing less at this point. Stupid godforsaken trans-server. Stupid godforsaken teleportation scramblers.

He hopped to his feet, stretching out his stiff servos and turning in a slow circle. “Which way was your house again, Xan?” he muttered as if asking the question aloud would somehow prompt the human to answer from however far away they were.

“This way.”

Axl spun around, blinking in surprise and confusion at the sight that greeted him. A small, faintly glowing ball of light was floating at eye level about a foot away from him, and when he squinted closer, he could barely make out a familiar silhouette somewhere in the center. “X?”

“This way, Axl. Hurry. I can’t stay long.”

“Why are you-”

“I’m a cyber-elf.”

“You’re a _what_?”

“A cyber-elf,” X repeated patiently, beckoning with what looked like a translucent, rainbow-hued wing for Axl to follow him. “Come _on_ , Axl.”

“Y-yeah, sure.” Axl was quick to follow after his old friend, deciding not to ask for the moment about why he was less than a foot tall and seemed to have grown wings. Instead, he allowed his mind to wander as he walked, his brow beginning to furrow as guilt settled over him.

“What’s bothering you?” X asked without turning his head.

Axl stopped walking, and X stopped too and turned around, fluttering over to hover in front of Axl’s nose. “Well?” he prompted with that ever-calm smile he was so good at. “What’s wrong?

“Dammit,” Axl whispered. “Dammit, X, I gave up, okay? I . . . I went in without a plan and made a big mess of things and almost got myself _killed_. Then I wound up in cyberspace again and I . . . I just . . . I wanted to run away from it all! I was gonna give up.”

“Is that all?” To Axl’s surprise- and mild annoyance- X was still smiling patiently. “It’s nothing to dwell on. Everyone gives up a time or two in their lives- even Maverick Hunters.”

“You didn’t.”

“You really think so, Axl?” X said with a dry laugh. “What do you think my retirement after the Sixth Uprising was if not a prime example of giving up?”

“But you came back.”

“So did you.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Axl admitted softly. “If someone hadn’t lectured me about it.”

“Who?”

“I . . . I don’t wanna talk about it.”

X frowned, but when Axl didn’t seem inclined to budge, the tiny cyber elf dropped the subject and turned to flutter onwards once again. “Come on, pick up the pace a little.”

“So, okay, I gotta ask,” Axl said, jogging forward so that he could walk at X’s side and shaking off the memory of his long-gone father figure. “What exactly _are_ cyber-elves?”

“Computer programs made of pure energy. We function by interacting with cyberspace, since it’s a parallel world where everything exists in the form of a program.”

“That’s . . .”

“Strange, I know.” X shrugged his tiny shoulders, continuing to flutter along next to the gunner. “They were developed long after you were . . . put out of commission. Cyber-elves manifest their power by altering the ‘program’ as it were of cyberspace, causing changes in the material world.”

“Changes?” Axl echoed. “What kinda changes? Like, you could move a rock from one place to another or something?”

“Technically, I suppose,” X said with a nod. “Most cyber-elves specialize in something in particular- increasing someone’s power, repairs, environmental changes . . .”

“So lemme get this straight,” Axl said. “Reploids die, they turn into data. Data flows back to cyberspace. Cyber-elves can alter cyberspace’s program to manifest themselves in the real world as tiny fairies and repair stuff and move stuff around.”

“Something like that, yes. It does take energy to manifest like this, all the same. And . . . and I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of that left. I used a lot up helping Zero some years back.”

“Can Zero . . . ?”

“No, he doesn’t have the knowledge for it; it’s not an easy thing to do. But don’t think that he doesn’t try.” X chuckled quietly. “Dead or not, he’s a damn stubborn idiot.”

Axl managed a genuine laugh, and for a while, he and X both fell silent. It was a nice quiet though, reminding Axl of the walks they used to take in the park on nice evenings.

“I can find my way from here,” Axl said when the small house came into sight on the horizon. “Thanks. You should go . . . rest and stuff.”

“I wish there was something more I could do,” X said softly.

“Hey, you’ve done hell of a lot already,” Axl said with the biggest grin he could muster. “Don’t like break your cyber elf form or anything, jeez.”

There was a long pause, and Axl’s grin slowly faded, giving way into a small, soft frown. “I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered, holding out his hand.

“I know.” X’s gaze was full of pain and regret as fluttered over to rest in Axl’s palm. “I’d stay if I could. Believe me, Zero and I would like nothing more than to fight alongside you and kick the sorry asses of the people who’ve brought this hell upon innocent heads.”

Axl silently couldn’t help but think to himself that those were probably Zero’s words.

“Axl, just remember this,” X murmured. “No matter what happens, Zero and I are proud of you. You’ve fought hard and more than proved your worth as a Maverick Hunter, and we couldn’t ask anything more. We’ll watch over you. That’s a promise.

He blinked up at the gunner, offering him one last smile, and then vanished in the same soft ball of light Axl had seen when he first appeared.

Axl drew another sigh as he watched the light fade and flicker away, as if someone had softly blown out the flame of a candle. “Always there to guide me, huh? Man, I miss you guys . . .” A surge of determination welled up in his chest, and he took a deep breath and lifted his head with a proud smile and new energy burning in his eyes. He could do this. He _could_ do this, right? Everyone was behind him- his father, his mentors, and he was sure that every other Hunter in cyberspace was probably watching from somewhere too.

So he was going to _do_ this.

“I’ll keep fighting in your memory, guys,” he said aloud.“No matter what. I won’t let you down again, cross my heart.”

He took the remainder of the walk more slowly, using the extra time to clear his head and organize his thoughts. Man, did he _ever_ have a lot of explaining to do, he mused to himself as he took a deep breath and knocked on his friend’s door.

“Coming,” called a voice from inside, and a moment later the door opened with a click and Xan peered outside, their eyes immediately widening in surprise.

“Uh . . . hey, Xan,” Axl greeted with a smile that didn’t come out nearly as broad and friendly as he hoped.

Of course his mind chose exactly that moment to go blank, whatever explanation he’d planned out in his head during the walk disappearing into the dark recesses of his processor never to be found again. “Sorry,” he blurted out instead of stopping to think of a new nicely-worded explanation. “I’m sorry I left like that. It’s not that I don’t trust you, I _do_ trust you, I didn’t trust myself is all, and it doesn’t have _anything_ to do with you being a human- well, okay, actually it _does_ because I didn’t want you to get hurt in there and . . . and . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized, for one, that he had managed to say all of that without pausing for breath, and two, that Xan was laughing at him.

Well that was certainly better than the alternative of being mad at him.

“You can stop now, Axl, I get it,” Xan chuckled, turning around with a friendly wave that instantly made Axl’s expression brighten. “Honestly, I’m just glad to see you again; come inside. I can’t believe you’re even still alive.”

“Neither can I, after the mess I made of things. Guess I really didn’t think it through.”

“No kidding.”

A pause.

“Um, Xan?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you kill me if I told you that I dislocated my shoulder- again?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, then I won’t tell you,” Axl said, grinning and patting Mink on the head as the little robotic cat padded up with a mew of greeting. “Hey, kitty.”

“Oh, come on,” Xan said with a roll of their eyes. “Let’s see about fixing up your shoulder . . . _again_.”

Axl settled down on the bed in the lab without even needing to be asked, reaching up to undo the latches on his torso armor while Mink happily plopped in his lap and began kneading against his thigh. “Aaaaaaah tiny claws, Xan why did you build your cat with tiny kitten claws those don’t feel good aaaaaah . . .”

“Authenticity, you big wuss,” Xan replied, setting their toolkit on the bed and immediately getting to work examining the dislocated joint and shredded circuits of Axl’s shoulder. “So what’d you do to it this time?”

“I had a sort of . . . temperamental cellmate during my stay in the arena,” Axl explained. “Grey armor, spikes, plasma blades-”

“Ah, I know of him. I’ve seen him fight; he’s pretty ruthless.”

“You’re telling me. He wasn’t exactly happy to see me when I came back.” Axl scratched the back of his head with an embarrassed smile. “Long story short, it started with a shouting match and ended with him wrenching my shoulder out of its socket.”

“Ouch.”

“I said the same thing. Several times.”

“Well, the damage is worse than it was last time,” Xan determined after a few more moments of examination, leaning back in their chair and rubbing their chin. “It never healed properly in the first place, from the look of things. I’m not gonna lie; if I try to fix it straight up, it’s gonna hurt like hell.”

“Go for it,” Axl said. “It’s my own fault for letting it get so damaged. I probably deserve it. And I’ve been through worse in medical.”

“Maybe so, but it won’t be an easy fix. Come to think of it . . .” Xan snapped their fingers, standing up and beginning to dig through the drawers of their desk. “There’s a nanite-based painkiller I coded for just such a situation, when I was . . . well, let’s just say it was a while ago. Here it is.”

“That’s . . .” Axl leaned away at the sight of the electronically wired syringe that Xan pulled from the drawer. “Xan, that’s a _really_ big needle.”

“No it isn’t,” Xan said with a roll of their eyes. “Look, it’s either you let me try this or it’s gonna hurt, and it’ll hurt a lot more than it did the last two times. And you’ll be easier to keep still if you’re not writhing in pain the entire time.”

A bit hesitantly, Axl turned his wounded shoulder toward his friend, honestly more leery of the needle itself than whatever was inside of it. “Have you ever tested this stuff?”

“I never got the chance, I’m afraid, due to . . . circumstances beyond my control. But it’s safe, I’m sure of it.”

“All . . . all right.” Axl screwed his eyes shut and turned his head away, as he so often used to whenever a medic at Headquarters decided to shove a needle in his anything. He was curious about these ‘circumstances’, to be sure, but now didn’t seem like the time. “Get it over with, then.”

“Some brave Maverick Hunter,” Xan chuckled as they carefully injected the nanites into the circuits of Axl’s shoulder. “Afraid of a little shot.”

“Shut up,” Axl grumbled. “Ow. _Ow_.”

“There, that should do it,” Xan said after a moment, drawing the needle out and tucking it back into their desk drawer. “Go ahead and lay down and get settled.”

Axl flopped down on his uninjured side without protest, surprised to feel that his injured shoulder was already growing numb. “That stuff’s not so bad. If only you had a way of making it work that didn’t involve stabbing my arm with a bigass needle.”

“Axl, it wasn’t that big.”

“Was too.” Axl closed his eyes, a smile twitching at his lips. Okay, so it really hadn’t been _that_ bad, but sometimes it was fun to play it up just to drive people up the wall. It had been a long time since he last slept and even longer since he had been able to relax, but the soft clatter of tools and the hum of the machinery around the lab were strangely soothing. Even more soothing was Mink hopping up to settle near his head, the robotic cat purring up a storm and causing Axl’s smile to broaden.

Within ten minutes, the gunner had eased into a deep, peaceful hibernation, his chest rising and falling slowly and his mouth slightly open with soft, fluttery-sounding snores. 

* * *

“Axl? Hey, Axl, wake up.”

“Mmph . . .” Axl opened his eyes groggily, his systems struggling to come out of hibernation and leading him to wonder if the blurry object standing over him was a figment of his imagination or a remnant of his dream. “S’at you Xan . . . ?”

“How do you feel?”

“Sleepy,” Axl mumbled.

“Sit up.” Ignoring the Reploid’s almost childish grumbles of protest, Xan hauled him into a sitting position, immediately leaning closer to check his shoulder for any outward signs of damage. “Can you move your shoulder? Any pain?”

“Uhh . . .” Axl tried to shake the fog from his head as he slowly flexed his injured joint, almost _unwilling_ at this point to let himself come back online all the way. He’d been sleeping so _good_ dammit, and he still wasn’t entirely recharged yet and all his systems wanted right now was the sweet, sweet embrace of sleep. “Kinda sore. Feels smooth though.”

“Good,” Xan sighed. “Your pain sensors are back online, so the nanites did their job properly. In which case, it’s my turn to take a rest.”

“M’kay,” Axl murmured, flopping lazily onto his back and immediately settling back into hibernation.

He didn’t stir again until a sharp pain in his shoulder jerked him into wakefulness several hours later, at which point he immediately sat up with a hiss and clasped a hand to the injured joint. “Owwww,” he whined. _Fuck_ his lack of ability to sleep in one position for more than five minutes.

He sat up with a yawn, slowly arching his back in a stretch and running a basic diagnostic scan of his systems. Though he was still drowsy, his vision was clear and his scans quickly began to send him back green results rather than the reds and yellows he’d been seeing for weeks.

Thank Asimov for sleep.

His aural receptors picked up the faint drone of the TV in the other room, and with another yawn, he hopped to his feet and ambled out of the lab, pleased to find that the lower half of his body was back to proper working order as well- no more painful, half-exhausted stumbling. A smile tugged at his lips when he saw Xan sound asleep on the couch, and he moved to the human’s side to give them a light shake. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, Xan. It’s late; you should go to bed.”

“Uh?” Xan lifted their head, blinking sleepily and rubbing one eye, and Axl couldn’t help but be amused at how similar it seemed his own wake-cycle. Not that it surprised him, but in all honesty, he’d never thought about how humans slept and woke before. “What time is it?”

“Past midnight.”

“Oh.”

Axl rolled his eyes mildly at the simple answer, the smile not leaving his features as he helped Xan amble to their feet. “Thanks, pal,” Axl murmured. “For fixing my shoulder, I mean.”

“No problem. Now this time, you _will_ give it ample time to heal, no matter how long it takes, and you _will not_ dislocate it again. _Won’t you_?”

“I didn’t dislocate it,” Axl pointed out with a far-too-innocent smile. “Someone else did.”

“Axl . . .”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Axl laughed. “I’ll take it easy, honest. But come to think of it, where _did_ you learn to code painkillers and fix joints like that, anyway?”

“Long story,” came the answering yawn. “Tell you tomorrow over breakfast.”

“I don’t eat breakfast. But alright, sounds fair. Get some rest.”

“Mm. Night, Axl.”

“Night, Xan.”


	14. Chapter 14

“Morning Axl,” Xan greeted.

“S’up?” Axl replied with a stretch and a loud yawn, several more hours of sleep having left him with far more energy than any Reploid with a teenage AI ever needed. He seemed to be channelling it well for the moment all the same, though that could also have been a side effect of having just woken up. His gaze fell on the two plates of eggs, toast, and bacon on the kitchen table, and he tilted his head and blinked up at Xan inquisitively. “Are you really _that_ hungry?”

“No. That one’s yours.”

“I, uh . . . you do remember that I’m a Reploid, right? And therefore synthetic and therefore don’t . . . actually eat . . . ?”

“Don’t _need_ to eat,” Xan corrected. “Won’t do your systems any harm though, will it?”

“Well, no. They’ll just kinda harmlessly burn it up into an insignificantly minuscule bit of energy.” Axl sat down with a half-smile, giving the cat winding around his ankles a light nudge with his toe. “Shoo before I trip on you. You can’t share.”

Xan settled down in a chair opposite the Reploid and offered him a cup of coffee, which Axl took with a smile and a nod. Not that caffeine really had much of an effect on his systems either, but then, people tended not to enjoy his company much when he was hopped up on the caffeine-equivalent for Reploids. “So,” Axl said, taking a drink and furrowing his brow slightly as he grew accustomed to the bitter flavor. “You have a story to tell, am I right?”

“So I do.” The human was quiet for several long moments, sipping idly at their own hot drink. “Ask whatever you’d like, I suppose.”

“Well I mean . . . you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about medical procedures and Reploid systems and repairs and all that.”

“I am, yes.”

“Where’d you learn that kinda stuff?”

There was another pause, during which Axl lowered his gaze and started on his breakfast, giving his friend time to think and choose their words. “I’d always been interested in being a medical engineer,” Xan said after some time. “It’s . . . rather unfortunate, I suppose, that with things being the way they are, the only place I could really get a job doing so was . . . well . . .”

“The arenas, huh?” Axl said.

“Bingo,” Xan murmured. “I worked as a medic there for a few years, moving from one arena to the next. I guess I thought I could do some good by being a friendly face amidst all the death suffering. Load of bull that turned out to be. The higher-ups there decided whose lives I was to save, and who I was supposed to just leave laying there to bleed out. It made me feel sick, honestly.”

They paused to take a sip of their coffee. “To my mind, one injured prisoner is no better or worse than the next. None of them deserve to be ignored.”

Axl looked up from his plate with curiosity in his gaze, remembering well the day that a nasty electrocution had left him in the medbay, and he now realized that he likely could have been simply left for dead had they decided to make it so. The thought seemed to visibly disturb him, and he was silent for a moment, taking a slow drink to calm his nerves. “What did they base their decisions on, in that case?”

“From what I understand.” Xan cleared their throat quietly, as if to steady themselves a bit. “Performance. The crowd’s responses. Whoever they believed would draw applause and excitement and victories . . . those were the ones I was to attend to. The ones who ‘bored’ the crowd, or the ones who they assumed wouldn’t last were simply . . .”

“Left for dead,” Axl finished softly. “I see.”

Xan nodded slowly. “After a few years, I just . . . couldn’t take it. So I left, and I took a job as a programmer, so that I could work from home and stay away from it all.” They drew a quiet sigh and drained their mug before speaking again. “I apologize, Axl.”

“What for?”

“All circumstances aside, I did work for them willingly. And . . . I haven’t stopped feeling guilty about it, but that doesn’t change what I did. And it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been hiding out here like a coward ever since.”

“Hmm . . . that’s true, I suppose.” Axl twirled a fork idly between his fingers for a few moments. “Still . . . it sounds like you had good intentions. Hell, all you ever wanted to do was help people and save some lives, right?” He offered the human a friendly smile. “And I still trust you, all the same.”

“I . . . appreciate it, Axl. Thank you.”

“Nah, don’t mention it. I’m the one who oughta be thanking you.”

“What for?”

“Oh, let’s see.” A grin tugged at Axl’s lips, and he leaned back and folded his hands behind his head once again. “Saving my life, for one. Fixing up my shoulder even after I’d been an ass to you. Being my friend when I had damn near no one else to turn to.” His expression softened slightly. “Trusting a Reploid like myself. And for breakfast too. Maybe I’m just easily impressed because I don’t eat very often, but this is really, really good.”

“Heh. You’re welcome, in that case. Now stop talking and eat.”

It was later that same afternoon than Xan found Axl in the lab doing a set of slow stretches that seemed to resemble some kind of yoga, though the movements were clearly modified for his synthetic body and servos. “Axl, what are you up to?” Xan asked.

“Just gonna do some light training,” Axl replied, straightening up and scooping his pistol off of the desk. “I’ll be careful of my shoulder, don’t worry. No pull-ups.” He paused, tipping his head slightly as he caught sight of something shiny in the corner of the lab that he hadn’t noticed before amidst the chaos of papers and half-finished projects and boxes and datapads. “What’s that?”

“Staff,” Xan replied, crossing the room and picking up the lightweight metal polearm. “I took self-defense classes some years back. Precaution more than anything, really.”

“That so?” Axl said, his eyes lighting up slightly. “Wanna spar with me for a bit? I’ll take it easy on ya.”

“I suppose I don’t see why not. I trust you.”

“Great!” Axl said, brightening as he tucked his pistol away at his hip and led the way outside.

“Just . . . fair warning,” Xan said with a nervous smile as they and Axl took up positions on opposite sides of the yard. “It’s been quite a few years since I’ve done anything like this, and my back’s a bit stiff.”

“No problem; we’ll take it easy. Your move first.”

It took Axl a moment to slow his pace to match that of his human friend, seeing as how he was used to fighting synthetics with reflexes as fast as his own. “Not bad,” he said as the staff cut through the air next to his ear. “You’re faster than you look. Then again . . .”

Xan swung heavily at Axl’s left side, and the staff clashed against Axl’s forearm with a resounding clang as the gunner reached up to block. “So am I.” He gave Xan a light shove, causing the human to stumble back slightly and shake their head.

“C’mon Axl, what good is this doing you? You’re not even using your gun.”

“Well, _duh_ I’m not using my gun. Do you _want_ me to accidentally plant a bullet in your leg? Especially this far away from a hospital?”

“Not . . . not really, no.”

“Man, I’m glad I’m a robot,” Axl said, his eyes beginning to glean with mischief. “Being made of flimsy flesh instead of metal must suck.”

“Oooh. That was a low blow, Axl.”

“Yeah? What’re you gonna do about it?”

“Oh that’s how you wanna play?” A smile was tugging at Xan’s lips, their nervous tension gradually giving way to a more relaxed if still poised-to-move posture. “I’m not gonna just let that one slide!”

“Catch me if you can!” Axl laughed, taking off across the yard in a sprint and looking back over his shoulder to see if Xan was following. “C’mon slowpoke, step it up- oof!”

“Well go figure,” Xan said, watching Axl stumble and rub the side of his jaw. “Looks like that tree came in handy.”

“I so knew it was there!”

“Then why’d you run into it?”

“I love plants?”

“My turn.” Xan took a running start and planted the end of their staff in the ground, vaulting into a kick and launching themselves toward the gunner.

“Yikes!” Axl twisted his body to the side, nodding in approval when he saw Xan land with near-perfect balance. “Pretty good. Now it’s _my_ turn to go on the offensive!”

“Bring it on, Reploid!”

“You asked for it, human!”

It was hours later before Xan sat down in the grass with a soft thump, their breaths coming in short, raspy pants. “I give, Axl, I _give_. I can’t keep going . . .”

Axl flopped down on the ground beside his friend, panting lightly and watching with amusement at the way the human collapsed onto their back with a loud groan. “Well that was fun.”

“I’m not gonna be able to _move_ tomorrow.” Xan strained to sit up for a moment before giving up and splaying out on their back again, ignoring Axl’s soft, muffled snicker. “I . . . I better go inside and take a shower- ow . . .”

“Oh here, gimme your hand,” Axl said, helping Xan to their feet. “You’re not too bad. A few months of drills and we can recruit you as a rookie Maverick Hunter.”

“Ha ha, Axl.”

As Xan limped off to the shower, Axl sat down and turned on the TV, stretching his arm out to give his shoulder a well-earned rest. Some cartoon he didn’t recognize was on the channel the TV had been left on last, and he realized that it had been _ages_ since he’d watched cartoons.

Zero had never much liked cartoons.

He reclined on the couch for some time, scooting over when Xan emerged from the shower in sweats and a tanktop and sat down alongside him. “I’m _beat_ ,” Xan yawned, stretching their arms over their head.

“Yeah, me too. Been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a good sparring match like that.”

For a short time, human and Reploid fell into a pleasant silence, both of them content to relax and enjoy the cartoons that Axl had put on TV. “I better get to bed,” Xan said at last. “I’ll fall asleep on the couch again if I don’t go now, and that won’t do my back any favors.”

As Xan stood up and turned to leave, Axl caught sight of a mark on the back of their shoulder. “Xan, what’s that?” he asked without thinking.

Xan craned their neck, following Axl’s gaze and frowning as they realized what had sparked the gunner’s curiosity this time. “Oh. That.” They lifted up their shirt, revealing a scar that stretched from their left shoulder blade to the bottom right edge of their back. “It happened a few years ago.”

“Whoa . . .” Axl stood up, lightly placing a hand on the rough, jagged skin. No _wonder_ the human had mentioned being stiff earlier. “What . . . how did this _happen_?”

“I guess . . .” Xan fixed their shirt and sat back down, shaking their head sadly. “This is what happens when you defy their ideals to their faces.”

Axl slowly lifted a hand to his healing shoulder, swallowing back the wave of nervousness that welled up in the pit of his stomach. “Um . . . care to explain a little more?”

“It . . . was after I’d quit my job as a medic,” Xan said after a moment’s pause. “I was in town, and I saw some sick Reploids being interrogated by the police. I thought . . . I thought I could get them to listen to me if I said I was a medic, but the police said they’d both have to be taken for disposal.”

“They were going to retire two Reploids just for being _sick_?!” Axl interrupted, unintentionally raising his voice. “That’s _insane_ , don’t you have scans and antivirals?!”

“ _Yes_ , Axl, we do.” Xan rubbed their forehead tiredly, leaning their head back with a sigh. “One of the officers was a human and the other one, the synthetic, looked too nervous to speak out. I tried to argue against it but they weren’t interested in a word I had to say.”

“Okay,” Axl said, “but that doesn’t explain why someone tried to cut you in half diagonally.”

A pause, and Xan fixed the gunner with a worn, exasperated look that Axl was all-too-familiar with as a clear-cut if silent, ‘you need to stop talking now’. “Sorry,” Axl mumbled. “Uh . . . continue.”

“They had this . . . thing with them,” Xan went on after another brief silence. “I don’t know if I can call it a mechaniloid, it almost looked humanlike. But it didn’t speak; if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought it was a decoration or a statue or something. Until . . .”

“Until?” Axl prompted.

“I got heated,” Xan said. “Started getting in the officers’ faces. I thought I saw the statue thing move, and there was this . . . this humming sound, like a plasma generator turning on, and next thing I knew it felt like my back was on fire. And . . . next thing I can remember is waking up in the hospital. They warned me not to try anything again, I agreed, and they let me off.”

“Shit,” Axl murmured. “I’d say that’s rough, but . . . I feel like that’s . . .”

“An understatement, I agree,” Xan said. “I never even found out what happened to the two Reploids. Heh . . . it’s kind of sad, isn’t it? Just thinking about it is making my legs shake . . .”

They looked up, fixing Axl with a stern if worried and worn gaze. “This isn’t gonna be as easy as just getting everyone out, Axl. You’re gonna have to change a lot of people’s minds, and most of them won’t want to listen.”

“Yeah, I know,” Axl said quietly. “I know it won’t. You . . . you should go get some rest. It’s late.”

“I will,” Xan said with a nod. “I have to go into town tomorrow anyway, I need supplies. And groceries.”

“Those are probably important, yeah.” Axl managed a half-smile, knowing that he probably wouldn’t get much sleep himself after everything he’d heard. “Think I’ll go with you. I could use a chance to stretch my legs.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Axl?”

“Of course it is.” Axl tugged the brim of his hat down a little lower over his eyes, carefully monitoring his energy levels to ensure that his copy chip would hold his transformation, as well as being careful to keep his signal cloaked. “I always have good ideas.”

“Like the idea to fall out of the tree in my front yard and land with your full weight on the shoulder I’d just put back in its socket?”

A pause.

“I usually have good ideas.” Axl glanced over his shoulder, trying to make a mental map of the city as they walked. “I’ll be fine. Especially if you stop fussing about it and walk.”

“I’m walking, I’m walking.” Xan rolled their eyes mildly, shifting the bag of supplies that they had swung over one shoulder. “Anacua is about the only place even remotely nearby that _almost_ seems like there’s some hope left,” they added under their breath. “Every now and again I’ve even seen an officer look the other way.”

“That’s a shock,” Axl muttered. “The last few officers I met wanted to retire me for being old.” He sniffed, scuffing at the ground lightly as he walked. “I’m not _that_ old.”

“Over a century is pretty damn old, Axl.”

“I’m young at heart. Are you getting food or not?”

“ _Yes_! Wait out here.” Xan shook their head in amused exasperation, pointing to a bench outside of the grocery store. “Sit. Stay here. Don’t cause trouble.”

“Woof,” Axl replied with a grin, settling down and welcoming the chance to let his systems cool off. He couldn’t drop his transformation yet, his current appearance resembling that of a random civilian whose data he’d copied a long, long time ago as a mercenary. Curtis had been his name, he recalled.

He was content to sit and people-watch for a while, immediately noticing that Anacua in general seemed to be _quieter_ than the other cities he’d visited thus far. There were Reploids around, he could tell that much from general signal sweeps, and a number of them still looked tense, but the atmosphere seemed . . . different.

Or so he thought, until he heard screaming from a couple blocks away.

Don’t cause trouble, Xan had said. But he wasn’t _causing_ trouble, Axl mused to himself as he got to his feet and took off toward the sound at a sprint. With any luck, he’d be able to _fix_ the trouble.

Besides, a Maverick Hunter, even a technically former Maverick Hunter, couldn’t in good conscience _ignore_ someone screaming.

The gunner skidded around the corner, physically wincing when the next thing he heard was a sharp crack of metal against concrete as a Reploid’s body hit the ground. A second Reploid was still standing a few feet away, looking equal parts confused and terrified and staring wildly back and forth between their fallen comrade and the nearby human with a metal baseball bat in hand. “Hey, _hold it_!” Axl shouted without thinking.

Several heads turned in his direction, and Axl instantly felt a knot in his stomach when he realized that he’d managed to catch the attention of just about everyone on the block. “What’s . . .” His voice faltered for a moment, and he had to stop and take a breath before he found the will to speak up. “Someone explain what’s going on here!”

“They attacked me!” the human cried, thrusting the baseball bat in the direction of the grounded Reploid.

“It’s not his fault!” the Reploid who was still standing shot back. “He’s sick! I’m just trying to get him to a hospital . . . !”

“Whoa wait,” Axl said, turning his attention toward his fellow synthetics for a moment. “Are there hospitals in this town that still treat Reploids?”

The Reploid gave a small nod in response, and Axl lifted his arm without turning around- his _good_ arm, thankfully- easily blocking the human’s swing for his neck and allowing the metal bat to bounce off of his forearm with a resounding _clang_. “Quit that,” he said. This city had _promise_. This city wasn’t entirely jaded yet, if he could get the situation under control before the police came to take over . . .

He snatched the metal bat away with a quick twist of his arm, ignoring the human’s cry of protest and glancing around to observe the rapidly gathering crowd. Don’t screw this up. Don’t screw it up, this was his _chance_. “Would you swing at another person with a metal bat that hard?” he asked, finally turning toward the human who had been staring wide-eyed at his back. “Another human?”

“O-of course not . . . !”

“Then _why_ would you do it to a Reploid?”

“Bec . . . because . . . !” The human paused, trailing off with their mouth still hanging open.

“All right,” Axl said softly. Great, now a crowd was _really_ gathering, he’d never had much practice speaking for crowds. “All right!” he repeated, raising his voice and deactivating his copy chip, feeling his circuits and servos moving in a familiar shift as he reverted to his own appearance and tossed his hat to the ground. A murmur of surprise rippled through the crowd, and while a few humans and Reploids alike backed away, most of them stayed still, watching and waiting for the gunner’s next move.

Quite frankly, Axl found the entire scenario terrifying.

“Look at them,” he said, making sure that his voice was loud enough for the whole crowd to hear as he gestured to the two Reploids who had been attacked. “ _Look_ at them and tell me what you see!”

“Two . . . two synthetics?” someone called hesitantly.

“Two Reploids?” someone else put in.

“ _No_!” Axl said. “Well- yes, but _no_! If you didn’t know they were Reploids, what would you _see_?”

There was a long pause, filled only with the uncertain murmurings of the watching crowd. “They look . . . scared,” someone piped up at last. “And confused.”

“We _are_!” the Reploid who was still on their feet broke in, moving to crouch next to their companion. “He’s just sick, that’s all! He’s _sick_ . . .”

Axl glanced around, trying to find a way to stall for time while he mentally worked himself up to make some kind of rousing, heroic speech, his expression brightening slightly when he saw Xan standing at the edge of the crowd. He caught his friend’s eye, but to his surprise and dismay, Xan hung back, looking just as nervous and uncertain as everyone else in the crowd. “Damn it all, help me out here,” Axl muttered under his breath before raising his voice. “Does anyone out there have any medical training?”

He saw Xan’s shoulders rise in a sigh, and after another moment’s hesitation the human started slowly pushing their way through the crowd to Axl’s side. “Relax,” the gunner said, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “I’ve got your back, Xan, this isn’t like last time.”

“Damn well better,” Xan muttered back as they crouched down to examine the fallen Reploid. “What’d I tell you about trouble?”

“To not cause it,” Axl replied, stepping aside so that the watching crowd could see the way Xan quickly and carefully examined their patient. “I’m not causing anything, I just happen to be involved.”

“You just happen to be a noisy pain in the ass,” Xan said. “Looks like only minor blunt trauma to the chest and shoulder. And I’m assuming a viral infection, something’s offlined their optical and aural sensors. Look.”

They waved a hand left and right in front of the Reploid’s eyes, then snapped their fingers several times near each ear, and every time the Reploid had no response. “I doubt it’s permanent,” they added with a reassuring smile at the Reploid’s companion. “But they’ll need an antiviral and some rest and time.”

“There’s a hospital close by,” the healthy Reploid said with a nod. “I was trying to get him there . . .”

“This city’s _different_ ,” Axl said, still speaking loud enough for the watching crowd to hear. “It’s different than everything I’ve seen so far. It’s closer to . . . the way things used to be before.”

“You’ve got a working _copy chip_ ,” someone pointed out loudly. “You _must_ be old!”

Axl rolled his eyes, pretending that he didn’t see Xan’s knowing smile. “What was it like ‘before’?” the human who had initially taken the swing with the bat asked.

“It was . . .” Axl paused, searching for the right words. “It wasn’t so _tense_. It wasn’t about humans and Reploids, it was just about . . . _people_. Reploids feel, humans feel, _people_ feel- we’re all _people_. Some of us are just . . . squishier than others.”

To his surprise, he heard a few quiet noises of amusement at the word ‘squishier’, and to his even deeper surprise he realized that not a single police officer or authority figure had showed up yet to intervene. “So then someone answer me this,” Axl went on, gradually feeling himself getting more confident about his miniature rousing heroic speech. “How, in anyone’s right mind, does it _ever_ make sense to throw a _person_ in a gladiator arena, and make them fight for their lives day in and day out? Maybe it made sense in ancient Rome, but I thought everyone had evolved beyond that at this point.”

Another murmur rippled through the crowd, and as Axl watched their faces change from curiosity to discomfort and embarrassment, he finally felt a spark of hope beginning to form in his core. “It started with Donnelsbury, didn’t it?” he asked, hoping for a chance to gather some information. “After the gang war.”

“I was always told that the Reploid faction shot first,” the human who had been holding the bat pointed out, though their voice was much quieter than before. “But . . . er . . .”

“But?” Axl pressed hopefully.

“It . . . was both humans and Reploids who were caught in the crossfire,” the human went on. “So . . . I suppose it’s not . . . really right to put all the blame on one side.”

“Or to execute the entire remaining population of Reploids in the city?” Axl added. “And then keep pushing the blame on any Reploid that lifts a finger just because some gang members did something stupid?”

“Some . . . something like that . . .”

“You really are nuts, Axl,” Xan said, assisting the healthy Reploid in helping their sick companion to his feet. “I want to escort these two to the hospital and make sure they get settled in. Can you _please_ try not to get in any more trouble while I’m gone?”

“I don’t see any trouble here,” Axl said with an innocent shrug. “All I see is progress. I’m . . . gonna hang around for a little while, I think. I’m finally starting to feel like there might be a shot at this.”

To his pleasant surprise, several Reploids and a few humans hung around after the crowd dispersed, pressing him with more questions about what it was like ‘before’. Axl gradually began to relax and lower his guard as he talked, even more so when a few officers finally showed up and casually joined in the conversation after gathering details about the incident.

“You know, it might actually work,” Axl said as he helped Xan put away supplies and groceries several hours later. “I even had a human officer chatting with me at one point. Not even interrogating me, just . . . talking, and listening.”

Xan didn’t answer with more than a quiet murmur of acknowledgement, and Axl frowned, sliding the last box of cereal onto the shelf and closing the cupboard. “Hey, you’ve hardly talked since you got back from taking those two to the hospital, what’s up? He’s gonna be okay, right?”

“No, no, he’ll be fine,” Xan assured. “It’s not that. It’s just . . .” They sighed, sitting down at the kitchen table with a shake of their head. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Axl echoed. “What for? Today went better than _anything_ I’ve tried to do up ‘til now, what’s there to be sorry about?”

“You . . . have no idea how close I was to running away, Axl,” Xan said quietly. “I should’ve gone straight over to you instead of hesitating.”

“Hey . . . no harm no foul, right?” Axl said with a reassuring smile. “After what happened last time I can’t blame you; all you needed was a little nudge. Besides, the important thing is that those two are safe, and we made some progress.”

“I suppose so,” Xan agreed, getting to their feet with a nod. “If anything, it’s convinced me I can’t just sit around and watch it happen any more. Come into the lab for a minute, I’ve got some maps I want to show you.”

“Coming!” Axl rolled his bad shoulder a few times as he followed his friend into the other room, pleased to find that while it was still stiff, most of the soreness seemed to have faded for now. “What kinda maps are we talking here?”

“Schematics,” Xan replied, thumbing through several datapads on the bookshelf before sliding one out and tossing it in Axl’s direction. “And floorplans. I managed to sneak a few of them onto a flashdrive when I quit. Never really figured they’d come in handy again. And I think . . .”

They turned back to the shelf, skimming through another haphazard-looking stack and passing two more datapads over to the gunner, taking the rest of the pile over to their desk with them. “Those two should be broader, one of them has the cities with arenas nearby marked.”

“ _Sweet_.” Axl flopped down on his stomach on the bed, spreading the datapads out and making himself comfortable. “Now, how to start going about this . . . gotta take it down one arena at a time, first of all . . . but I’ll need to hit it off strong.”

“You’ll need help, too” Xan pointed out, skimming the notes on their own datapads that detailed medicines and medical procedures. “The Reploids on the inside would be the easiest to rally, if they’ll listen to you.”

“Yeah, I agree. Even some of the guards. If they’re anything like you, I bet we might be able to scrounge up the ones that don’t wanna be there in the first place and get them to help.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Xan agreed with a nod. “The more you’ve got on your side, the better your chances of making it out in one piece. Or alive, at the very least.”

“Alive would be good, yes.” Axl fell silent for a moment, drumming his fingers against the datapad idly. “I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that you’re not coming with me.”

“What do you mean I’m not-”

“Xan, there’s gonna be Reploids fighting other Reploids and people with shock staffs all over the place. You’re just . . . squishy. And I’m not joking this time.”

“Neither am I. You’re not going in there alone, Axl.”

“Xan-”

“Don’t _even_ ,” Xan insisted, their expression set in a stubborn frown. “I’m not an idiot, Axl, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m a trained fighter like you. But you’re going to need someone to bring in reinforcements, medics especially, once everything goes down.”

“Anacua?”

“Bingo. And that’s something I _can_ do.”

“And where would I be without my own personal ambassador,” Axl said with a grin.

The pair stayed up late that night, discussing options and bouncing ideas back and forth. By the time neither Axl nor Xan could see straight enough to focus on the datapads strewn out across the desk, they were both confident that they had a solid plan- or at least, as solid as they could get considering the circumstances.

Axl spent another three weeks with his friend, resting and recovering while he tried to plot out as many backup strategies as he possibly could. There were still a lot of unknowns, to be sure, but at least this time he _had_ a plan. This time, he wouldn’t be going in blind.

Not to mention, this time his shoulder was fully healed. Damn if it didn’t feel good to be back to one-hundred percent.

“This is it,” he said, flexing his shoulder in its socket as he made his way to the door. “Time to go kick some ass and take some names.”

“You sure you don’t want one more extra dose of nanites?” Xan teased, waving a syringe in Axl’s direction in a mock-threat.

“No, no, I’m good!” Axl cried. “I’m fine, no nanites, no more shots, I’m _good_ stop pointing that thing at me!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Xan laughed, setting the needle on the desk and moving to give the Reploid a light hug. “Be careful in there,” they said. “And good luck.”

“You know me,” Axl scoffed. “I was built careful. You got the memory files I downloaded for you?”

“Right here.” Xan gave the datapad in their hand a light tap. “If seeing what goes on in those arenas firsthand doesn’t get Anacua fully on our side, I’m not sure what will. I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

“Yeah, _you’ve_ got the hard part,” Axl said with a laugh, teal eyes glowing with a confidence he hadn’t felt in quite some time. “I’ll send you a ping when it’s time!”

“Damn well better. Stay strong, Axl.”

“Will do. Later, Xan!”


	16. Chapter 16

“Okay,” Axl muttered to himself. “Okay, here goes nothing. You got this . . .”

It seemed like the stupidest first step to any plan that had ever been conceived, walking right up to the front door of a gladiator arena in full view of three armed guards. Everything was cool, he wasn’t in range of the scramblers yet and he could still teleport out and regroup if they attacked him straight away, thanks to Xan fixing up his internal teleportation systems along with his shoulder. “Hey, hey, relax,” he said, holding up his hands in calm, unwavering surrender as the trio of guards approached him with staffs drawn. “I’m tired of running.”

“Is that so?” the tallest of the three guards pressed. “And what makes you say that? You’ve been here twice already causing trouble.”

“Frankly, I’m old and exhausted,” Axl said with a shrug. “Look I’ve tried being on my own in the city more than once and it _sucked._ At least here, I don’t have to spend every day sprinting away from the cops every time I so much as poke my nose out. May as well get in a few more good fights before I rust over, huh? I mean, an ex-mercenary always likes a good fight.”

Though there was still a mild flicker of suspicion in all three of the guards’ gazes, they slowly lowered their weapons, pinning Axl’s arms behind his back and bringing him inside. There was no fear in the gunner’s gaze, even as they snapped a familiar metal ring around his wrist. “Y’know,” he remarked, “you three are all Reploids too. Don’t you regret doing all this to your fellows?”

“It’s either this or _we’ll_ be the ones in those cells, fighting to the death!” one of guards snapped back.

“Okay, okay, chill. Just curious.”

The guard grunted in discontent, picking up a datapad from a shelf and skimming through it before nodding in satisfaction and waving their hand to dismiss their two companions. “You’re in luck, you scrappy little prototype. Looks like we have one free cell, so we don’t have to kill you here and now.”

“That’s a relief,” Axl said with a toothy grin.

“Maybe, but you might not be so happy once you meet your cellmate.” The guard gave Axl a push, guiding him down a familiar hallway. “Although, unless I read wrong, you’ve already met. And you got along _so well_ last time, too.”

Axl kept his grin plastered on his features, allowing himself to be shoved into an equally familiar cell without protest. “You sound like you’re _hoping_ he kills me.”

“Don’t give me any ideas,” came a sour grunt from across the room.

Axl looked over his shoulder, waiting for the guard to close the door before turning back to the grey-armored Reploid who was glowering at him. “Heya, Skrah.”

Silence.

“Y’know it’s polite to say hi when someone greets you,” Axl added.

“You just can’t leave it alone and lay low, can you?” Skrah grumbled, still looking as cross as Axl had ever seen him. “Why the hell are you back here _again_?”

Axl sat down on his bed, somehow still managing not to let his smile drop as he took off his helmet and set it and his pistol to one side. “It’s my job. Helping people and Reploids in need is just what I do.”

Silence.

“And anyway,” Axl added softly, his ear-to-ear grin fading into a more relaxed smile. “I have a plan. For real this time.”

“I don’t want to hear it! You drag me into your halfassed escape attempts and get me in trouble and I _swear_ this time I won’t stop with your shoulder! I’ll rip your core right out of your _chest_!”

“Thanks for the imagery. Always nice to get a warm welcome.”

The large monitor on the wall suddenly flickered to life, followed by a telltale _thunk_ of the door unlocking. “Sparring in five!” the guard onscreen ordered. “Get moving!”

“ _Already_?” Axl whined. “Aw come on, I _just_ got here!”

Skrah stood up, turning his back on Axl and stalking out of the room without so much as a word. “Nice to see you too, crankypants,” Axl sighed, scooping up his helmet and pistol and standing up to follow.

The sparring room hadn’t changed, as far as Axl could tell, and he was pleased to see Lysimachi standing off to the side by herself when he walked in. Good, that made two people he knew who were still alive. Before he could make his way over or catch her eye, one of the guards gave a shout of, “Over here, Spiky!” causing him to sigh in defeat and turn toward the ring.

“So,” the guard said. “You’re the one who won’t kill no matter what?”

“I like a good fight as much as the next person,” Axl replied patiently as he stepped into the marked-off area designated for the spar. “But you don’t have to kill someone to win a fight. Try to get the idea of right and wrong through your thick heads.” He took a deep breath, shaking off the nerves welling up in his core and managing to cast a smile and a nod to his opponent, a young-looking Reploid with short, fuzzy green hair and a small revolver in his hand. “Hey there. I’m Axl.”

There was brightness in this young Reploid’s eyes, far different from any others Axl had met in the arena thus far. “Hiya! I’m Dennis! Oooooh, nice gun,” he added, eyeing Axl’s pistol. “You wanna draw or what?”

“Hey, you’re asking for it, kid,” Axl said, unable to help a soft chuckle as he remembered how many times Zero had said the same thing to him.

Axl won the match, though he wasn’t entirely surprised- the other Reploid was young and inexperienced, but bright and eager all the same. It reminded him of his old days in training as a Maverick Hunter- a relaxed, friendly bout where they could focus on honing their skills, _without_ fear of death or serious injury from the other. When they both got a break, Axl seized his chance, glancing around to make sure the guards were busy before sitting down to talk to the young Reploid. “Hey, Dennis. You’re not a half bad gunslinger.”

“Aw, are you kidding?” Dennis laughed, holding up his hand for a high-five, which Axl happily accepted. “You kicked my butt!”

“Years of practice.” Axl leaned back, folding his hands behind his head and lazily crossing one leg over the other. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Few weeks. My best pal, Jace- he’s that older looking Reploid over there- got stuck here with me. He’s like my adoptive older brother. I want to find a way to at least get him out of here, if nothing else.”

“That’s a pretty bold thought,” Axl said, a smile beginning to tug at his lips.

“Yeah, what’s your point?”

“Ooooh. Sounds like you’re a pretty bold _kid_.” Axl glanced around again to be sure that they weren’t being watched, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “You wanna know something? I’m kinda planning a bit of an escape myself.”

“Really?”

“Not just that,” Axl muttered. “Can you keep a secret from these guards?”

“Course. Cross my heart.”

“The plan,” Axl said, his voice barely audible, “is to take this whole network of arenas down, starting with this one.”

A pause.

“You’re calling _me_ bold when you’ve got plans like that?” Dennis said with a quiet snicker. “Well, if you want a hand, I’m in. And I’m sure Jace will be too.”

“That’s the kinda thing I wanna hear.” Axl clapped Dennis on the shoulder. “I’ll keep you up to date, but don’t tell anyone else just yet ‘kay?” It was too early to start spreading rumors, not before he knew who was on his side and who would rat him out.

“Sure thing!”

Axl started to nod, only for a shriek and a crackle of electricity across the room to make them both flinch and turn their heads. Lysimachi was just straightening up from where she’d been crouched over her fallen opponent, but before she could even take a step there was another loud crackle of static, the burst of electricity from the ring on her wrist sending her to her knees on the ground. “How many times have we told you to save it for the floor!” one of the guards snapped. “Leave the flashy kills for the crowd to see, dammit!”

She simply nodded mutely, waiting a few moments longer before slowly getting back to her feet and stepping out of the ring. “She’s scary as hell,” Dennis mumbled. “Everyone I’ve seen try to fight her has gotten carried off sparking . . .”

“Lay low and stay out of trouble,” Axl said as he stood up. “I’ve got more work to do.”

He quickly made his way across the room, pausing for a few moments when Lysimachi caught his eye to make sure that she wouldn’t immediately try to shock him to death. “Long time, huh?” he said, leaning his back against the wall next to her and pretending to be more interested in a match going on a ways away. “Glad you’re still around.”

“Likewise,” she replied simply.

Axl cast a brief glance toward her, noting that she seemed completely unfazed by the heavy shock from the ring on her wrist only minutes prior. “Surge protectors,” he said, turning his gaze back toward the nearby match as the pieces started coming together.

“Pardon me?”

“Surge protectors,” Axl repeated. “There was an electrical unit I knew as a mercenary, way back. Tall guy with a double-ended saber, real cocky smooth-talker. His generator had a hell of a tough surge protection system on it.”

“Of course,” Lysimachi said, seeming to pick up on Axl’s casual tone and keeping her own mannerisms equally as calm. “He would have electrocuted himself just by being online otherwise.”

“Wish I had one that good,” Axl said. “I was down and out for two days last time you shocked me.”

“That was two days you didn’t have to fight,” Lysimachi pointed out. “I could have made it longer, had I overloaded your core and left your processor running on backup power.”

Axl’s lips twitched in the faintest hint of a smile, and he pushed himself off of the wall and straightened up, stretching his arms over his head as he moved. “Kind of a painful way to give someone a day off, but I’d bet some people would appreciate it. Keep your eyes open for a while, yeah? Glad to see you’re still around.”

It wasn’t exactly an army, he thought to himself, but two Reploids on his side, and a possible third, if he’d picked up on everything she’d said correctly, was a good start.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I'm pretty sure this is my favorite chapter in the entire fic.

“You’re up early,” Axl yawned when he woke up the next morning to find his roommate already on his feet and doing a series of pre-combat stretches. “They assign us already or what?”

Skrah didn’t speak, wordlessly angling his head toward the screen on the wall as he stretched his left arm across his chest. Biting back a quip about Reploids doing yoga, Axl followed his cellmate’s gaze to search out his name on the bracket.

To his surprise, intrigue, and perhaps a little fear, there was a white line connecting his name and Skrah’s. “Well whaddaya know,” Axl said, sitting up and pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “That’s an interesting bracket.”

“Don’t start, Axl,” Skrah said with a derisive snort. “And don’t even _think_ about holding back, or I’ll-”

“Rip my core out of my chest, yank my shoulder out of its socket, et cetera et cetera,” Axl interrupted. “Heard it all before, thanks for the warning. I get it.”

The gunner put on a calm front as he stepped onto the arena floor, flexing his fingers rhythmically against the trigger of his pistol and breathing slowly to help keep his servos relaxed and loose. The terrain was simple today, flat, empty, and open, and he wondered if they were trying to limit his options for staying out of the way and sniping from a safe distance. He closed his eyes for a moment, focusing his thoughts until the clamor of the crowd was no more than white noise, and even then he could feel Skrah’s glare burning into him like molten steel.

His cellmate sprinted forward, and Axl shifted his weight, already bracing himself for the attack.

_Clang!_

Metal struck metal as Axl blocked Skrah’s first swing with his forearm, immediately getting a sense of the strength in his fellow Reploid’s servos. Skrah followed up by jabbing his knee upward, and Axl sprang backwards, taking several hops away to get out of his opponent’s reach. “Stay _still_ , damn you!” Skrah growled.

“But that sounds so _boring_.” Axl sprinted for the nearest wall, scaling partway up and pushing off, the jets on his ankles humming as he carried his weight into a hover several feet above Skrah’s head. “There, I’m staying still.”

Skrah gave a less-than-amused grunt, taking a running start and leaping just high enough to grab onto Axl’s foot with both hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, don’t do that!” Axl yelped, feeling his center of gravity shift as the jet on his ankle became skewed. “Get off!”

Startled by his opponent’s speed and athleticism in spite of his heavy armor, Axl swayed wildly in midair for a few seconds before gathering his bearings and shooting two low-powered shots at Skrah’s hands, sending his cellmate tumbling to the ground and himself spinning into the wall from the sudden change in weight.

He was quick to angle his body so that his feet met the wall before his back, pushing off and tucking his body into a roll, well-aware that Skrah was already on his feet and rushing in for another attack. “Good warmup. Now let’s _really_ get this fight started!”

Axl was sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Skrah would never underestimate an opponent. He wouldn’t get cocky, and he certainly wouldn’t hold back. But even so, the gunner was also sure that there was one factor that his cellmate hadn’t taken into account.

Despite his childish behavior, despite his advocacy of mercy, and despite his lax appearance, Axl _loved_ a good fight.

The crowd went wild as the two Reploids clashed in a vicious battle, gunshots echoing, metal crashing against metal, and dust flying with every step. For some time, they appeared evenly matched as Axl did his best to keep his distance, but it wasn’t easy, especially on such flat, open terrain. Skrah was quick and light on his feet and didn’t let up the pressure for more than a minute or so at a time, and every swing that connected left Axl’s whole body rattled from the impact.

“You look tired,” Axl panted when they at last both hung back from making the next attack and paused to catch their breath. His body ached, but he was nowhere near worn out yet, his core racing to push a second wind of energy through his circuits. Dark fluid was trickling from a cut on his forehead, and his right eye was swollen half-shut from a punch he’d been too slow to dodge, not to mention the cracks and dents in his armor, but he still had a grin on his face, everything about him radiating confidence and excitement. “You giving up yet? I could do this all day!”

“Don’t test me!” Skrah snapped breathlessly. He was shaking with exhaustion, but Axl could still see the tension in his body and the fire in his violet eyes. “I’m not . . . I’m not done yet!” He closed his eyes, paused to curl his hand into a fist, and rushed at his fellow Reploid once more.

Axl turned his back and sprinted for the wall, the only terrain that he had to work with, feeling a flicker of hope that his cellmate wasn’t yet so broken that he was ready to stop fighting entirely. All the same, he hadn’t been entirely telling the truth when he said that he could keep this up _all_ day.

He raised his pistol, bending his knees and springing off of the ground as he fired, allowing the kick from his gun to propel him backwards through the air at high speed. It was a dangerous tactic, he was aware, to fling himself so close to an opponent who fought at close range, and he could practically hear Zero scolding him over it from cyberspace.

There was a scrape of dust as Skrah tried to skid out of the way, and a moment later Axl felt his back slam into his opponent’s chest with a _clang_ that made his aural circuits ring.

Axl was on his feet first, scrambling backwards and spinning around ready to fight with his gun already raised. He watched, his posture slowly beginning to loosen, as his cellmate struggled for several moments to push himself into a crouch before giving up and staying on his knees. “Well, are you waiting for?” Skrah said, his breaths still coming in short, uneven pants. “Kill me!”

Despite the demand, Axl could see nothing but terror in Skrah’s deep violet eyes, and he knew that his cellmate wasn’t just shaking with exhaustion- he was scared beyond his wits, even in the face of an opponent that he’d never seen fire a lethal shot before. “Kill!” chanted the crowd. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

_I don’t want to die_ , Axl could practically hear the other Reploid silently wailing. _Please don’t let me die here!_

Axl slowly lowered his gun.

The crowd immediately began to roar in anger, and up until now, Axl had always shied away from the jeers and screams, unsure of how to respond. But this time, as he watched Skrah cowering before him and heard the humans demanding that the terrified Reploid be killed, he felt a rush of fury welling up inside of him. “Hey. Hey! _Shut up a minute_!” he shouted, lifting his arm and firing a single bullet up into the air with a resounding crack.

The chanting stopped.

“Give me one good reason why I should kill him!” Axl said, suddenly unafraid to make his voice loud enough for every spectator to hear. “ _One_ reason and I’ll pull this trigger right now!”

He was met with nothing but cold, dead silence.

“Anyone?” Axl said, turning in a full circle to gaze over every part of the crowd. “Anyone at all? No?”

He looked down at Skrah, who had shrunk away and shut his eyes, still tense and shaking as though bracing himself for a bullet to pierce his core. “Don’t worry, pal,” Axl murmured. “You’re not gonna die. Not while I’m around.”

After a few more minutes of silence, the guards arrived to escort the two Reploids back to their cell. Skrah stumbled with every step, but still stayed on his feet, and Axl didn’t dare try to help, knowing that even now his cellmate would push him away out of stubborn pride. As soon as the door had locked behind them, Skrah staggered over to collapse on his bed, his eyes closed and his chest still heaving for breath.

He didn’t answer several soft calls of his name, and Axl frowned, settling down on his own bed with his knees hugged to his chest to wait for his fellow Reploid to recover enough to speak.

It was several hours before Skrah stirred again, and Axl shifted as well, slowly uncurling and stretching his arms over his head to work some of the stiffness from his body. “You back online over there?” he called hesitantly.

Skrah didn’t speak, slowly rolling onto his back and covering his eyes with his forearm. “Sorry about that last hit,” Axl said. “I didn’t mean to slam into you _that_ hard, I think I put too much kick into it. You alright?”

Silence.

“You alright?” Axl repeated, a little more softly this time.

“Damn you to _hell_ , Axl!”

When the outburst was followed with nothing but more silence, Axl slowly relaxed, certain that his cellmate wasn’t on the verge of springing across the room to grab him by the neck. “You’re scared,” Axl said at last. “I mean, I knew you were scared. Everyone here is. But you’re . . . _really_ scared. You really thought I was gonna . . .”

“Yeah,” Skrah whispered, sounding more tired and defeated than Axl had ever heard. “I’ve never lost before. Losing means getting killed, and I thought . . . I . . . I thought I was . . .” He trailed off, unable to finish his sentence. “Dammit . . . you’re so much _braver_ than I am, Axl. You’re not afraid to stand up for yourself, even if you might fail, or . . . or get yourself . . . killed . . .”

“Of _course_ I’m afraid, Skrah.”

At last, the grey-armored Reploid opened his eyes and turned his head.

“I _know_ I could fail miserably,” Axl went on. “I _know_ my life is at risk- _everyone’s_ is. But just because you’re _afraid_ doesn’t mean that you’re weak. If nothing else, it’ll make you more cautious so that you don’t run headlong into danger. It’s . . . something X taught me a long time ago.”

Skrah lowered his eyes, seeming lost for words for a long few moments before he piped up again. “I, uh . . . thanks. For . . . for not . . .”

“Don’t mention it.”

Skrah drew a heavy sigh, slowly sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck with a quiet noise of pain. “How long have you been fighting?” Axl asked softly.

“Hell . . . I don’t even know . . .” Skrah shrugged faintly, still seeming wary of being too open, but far less foul-tempered and closed-off than he had been up until now. “If I had to guess . . . probably at least a year. Maybe more. I-I don’t know how I’ve survived for so long.”

“So what’s kept you going?”

A pause.

“I’m scared to die.”

There was a brief silence, and then Axl gave a soft laugh, causing the other Reploid to fix him with a worn if familiar scowl. “Were you really so worried about admitting that to me?” Axl chuckled. “Y’know, I only ever met one person who truly wasn’t afraid to die, ‘specially considering that he managed to do it three or four times over. He had an entire mane’s worth blond hair and I looked up to him like a big brother. And even then, there were still things he feared. The fact that you fought for survival for this long is a sign of courage if I’ve ever seen one. I’m sorry I called you a coward before.”

“Yeah, I’m . . . sorry too. For . . . a lot of things, I guess.”

“Not gonna rip my core outta my chest?” Axl asked with a grin.

Skrah rolled his eyes, and Axl snickered, secretly relieved to see his cellmate’s usual exasperation beginning to overtake his wary exhaustion. “What are you planning to _do_ risking your life in here anyway?” Skrah asked, rather abruptly changing the subject.

“Well, I want to remind everyone that humans and Reploids aren’t all that different. Neither’s some untouchable force of good or bad, we’re all just . . . people, you know?”

“And how are you gonna prove that?”

“I’m gonna start here,” Axl replied. “Get everyone out, get everyone safe. Start trying to convince some of the nearby cities to come to our side. Then move on to the next arena, keep going ‘til they’re all gone.”

“Talk about gutsy,” Skrah muttered. “You’re going to be busting your ass, Axl. And probably several more body parts along the line.”

“Workplace hazard,” Axl said with a shrug. “Been used to it since day one. So are you in or not?”

A flash of visible surprise crossed Skrah’s features, and Axl bit back a smart remark about his cellmate actually emoting for the first time since they’d met. “Why would you ask _me_ of all people?” Skrah said.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, you’re an asshole,” Axl said. “Through and through. But . . . heh, this probably sounds weird, but I kind of _need_ an asshole around to keep my idealistic ass in check. Someone specifically a lot like you.”

“You’re . . . you’re serious?”

“Dead serious. So whaddaya say, are you in or not?”

There was another long silence, and Axl waited patiently, his cellmate gazing down at his lap in deep thought for a couple minutes before raising his head again, his violet eyes darkening with determination. “I don’t want to die in here, Axl,” he said quietly. “Whatever your plan is, you . . . you have my support. No matter what.”

Axl stood up, crossing the room to clasp a hand to Skrah’s shoulder and finding himself relieved to finally, _finally_ see something in the other Reploid’s gaze beyond anger and exhaustion. “Takes a lot of guts for you to say that and mean it,” Axl said quietly. “You have my trust, Skrah. I mean that. We’re _going_ to get out of here, but I need you to do one thing for me, alright?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t give up.”

Skrah narrowed his eyes, a familiar, determined stubbornness beginning to settle over his expression once again. “That much I can do.”

* * *

“Axl?”

The gunner rolled over with an unintelligible grumble, curling into a ball and tugging his blanket- if one could even call it a blanket- more tightly over his shoulders. “Axl,” his cellmate repeated softly. “You awake?”

“Not really,” Axl replied with a muffled yawn. “S’it morning already?”

“No, it’s . . . it’s late.”

Axl made a quiet noise of acknowledgment, yawning again as he rolled over and rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes. “S’up?”

“It’s . . . nothing,” Skrah said with an unusually shaky sigh. “It’s nothing. Sorry for waking you.”

“Y’know,” Axl murmured drowsily, laying his head back down, “when I said you have my trust, that means I’ll listen if you wanna talk, too.”

“Just . . . a recurring nightmare,” Skrah said after a few moments of hesitance. “About . . . what would happen if I ever lost. And . . . and this time you were there, and you were . . .”

Axl propped himself up on his elbow, frowning softly as his cellmate trailed off. “Yeah, I get it,” he said softly. “Bad dreams are the worst, believe me . . .” As well as he’d hidden it from his fellow gladiator thus far, he’d been having recurring dreams himself, always _dark_ , always with everything rumbling and collapsing and crashing down around him-

Skrah’s voice jerked him out of his thoughts, and he shook his head and turned his focus back to their conversation, somehow finding himself taking comfort in his cellmate’s rough, familiar tone. “Axl, when we were fighting earlier, it . . . it was like every nightmare I’ve ever had was suddenly a reality. And some part of me knew that you wouldn’t . . . really . . . but . . .”

“But you were scared,” Axl said with a small smile. “I know. Fear does funny things to you, huh?”

“Sorry I woke you.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” Axl yawned. “I’ll survive.”

Silence.

“Skrah?”

“Mm?”

“How’d you get here?”

“What’s it matter?”

“I’unno, I’m curious and trying to distract you to make you feel better?”

Skrah shuffled for a moment before rolling onto his side, keeping his back pressed against the wall as if he was afraid of leaving himself vulnerable. “I . . . I was built to be a security officer for a wealthy family; that’s how I learned to fight. And how to run wireless scans, hack into things, firewalls and so on. The family there was . . . they were good people. They had a young son and daughter, and they were fascinated with me for some reason.” For just a moment, as he spoke about the kids, his expression seemed to soften. “Eventually, I decided I wanted to study as an engineer, so I left.”

Axl listened in patient silence, having never heard Skrah speak this much before, much less so calmly. “I travelled for a while,” Skrah went on. “And it was . . . okay, I guess, until I got closer to the cities near the arenas. One day . . . I was just walking down the sidewalk when this police officer came rushing up to me and asked me for an ID. I’d never thought to carry one, so they grabbed me and tried to handcuff me.”

“Let me guess,” Axl interrupted with a grin. “You punched them.”

“Not on purpose, mind you.”

Axl propped himself up on his elbow, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “It _wasn’t_ ,” Skrah insisted. “I’m programmed for self-defense, fight or flight took over. It’s not like I punched them _that_ hard. Anyway, I was declared rogue and dumped in this cell. And . . . that’s about it. No one ever gave me a chance to explain anything, or . . .” He trailed off, dropping his gaze with a quiet sigh.

“Yeah, same thing happened to me,” Axl said. “And I didn’t even slug anybody.”

“So what about you?” Skrah said, abruptly changing the topic as if to stop himself from getting too lost in thought. “What were you created for?”

“Me?” Axl laughed softly. “Hell, I don’t remember a thing about my creator. I used to be part of a vigilante group called Red Alert, then shit went down and next thing I know I’m training as a Maverick Hunter. Heh . . . I miss it, but I gotta say it was pretty rough. There were days I thought for sure X was gonna rip my head off.” He broke off into a loud yawn. “I didn’t always make friends easily either, ‘specially at first. Guess people found me annoying or something . . .”

Skrah made a quiet noise somewhere between a snort and a huff, which Axl took to be the closest thing to amusement he was going to get out of his cellmate. “Yes yes, har har, hilarious,” the gunner said with a grin. “It’s easier when you have friends though, y’know? I mean . . . even though I know my old friends are still out there somewhere watching over me, it still gets kinda lonely.”

“Friends, huh . . . guess I didn’t make many of those as a security officer . . .”

For a short time, neither Reploid spoke.

“Skrah?”

“Hm?”

“Would you have killed me earlier? If you had won the fight?”

There was a long silence, but Axl didn’t dare speak, not wanting to push his cellmate back into keeping to himself now that he’d just started to relax and open up. “I . . . I don’t know,” Skrah replied at last. “A few months ago, I’m sure, but . . . I don’t know.”

“So . . .” Axl felt a flicker of hope in his core, the thought that maybe, after all of this, there was one more Reploid who was willing to see things through. “That thing about not having friends, as a security officer . . .”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Well what do you _think_ I’m getting at, blockhead, do you _want_ to be friends?”

A pause.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

“After I dislocated your shoulder, threatened to kill you, and insulted you on a daily basis?”

“Among other things.”

“You’d trust me after all that?”

“C’mon, Skrah, after everything I saw today, I think the least you deserve is a second chance. Besides, we all do the wrong thing sometimes. Nobody’s perfect, and an old-ass prototype ex-Maverick Hunter like myself is no exception. So are we friends or not?”

“I . . . I guess we are, yeah.”

Axl rolled onto his back with his lips still twitching in a smile, rather amused by the fact that his cellmate seemed to have a socially shy side under all the stoic crankiness. “Then we stick together until we get out of this hellhole. Deal?”

“In other words, I’m stuck with you until you decide otherwise.”

“You’re the one who agreed to it,” Axl hummed cheerily. “No takebacks. Now c’mon, it’s like four in the morning, go to sleep already.”

“Yeah, I will. Goodnight, Axl.”

The gunner simply continued to smile, waiting until his friend’s breathing had slowed before he rolled over and let his systems ease back into hibernation for the night.


	18. Chapter 18

Axl was pleasantly surprised to wake the next morning on his own, with no one banging on a door or jabbing him in the ribs to pull him out of hibernation. Come to think of it, it was kind of _strange_ to not be jabbed in the ribs or punched in the shoulder. He lifted his head with a yawn, and as his optics shifted into focus the first thing he saw was his cellmate staring at the door in deep concentration. “Um . . . what are you doing?”

Silence.

“Hello?” Axl pressed. “Skrah? Earth to egghead. Hey are you even listening to me? I could be saying anything to you right now and you’d never know. _Skrah_!”

His cellmate finally turned his head, violet optics glinting with mild irritation, but much less resentment than Axl was used to. “Something wrong?”

“No, I wanted to know why I woke up and found you looking at the door like you’re trying to glare a hole in it.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you just say so?”

Axl rolled his eyes, not quite sure if he should be amused or annoyed.

“I’m trying to hack into its systems,” Skrah explained, turning his gaze back toward the door. “In fact, I think I almost . . . ah!”

Something near the door made a low clunking noise, and Skrah sat up a bit straighter, his eyes giving away more satisfaction than his still-unchanging expression. “Got it!”

“Got what?” Axl yawned, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head.

“I unlocked the door,” Skrah replied, giving Axl a look that made it seem that _he_ at least thought the answer should’ve been obvious.

“You- oh,” Axl said, all kinds of possibilities immediately beginning to run through his head. “ _Oh_. That . . . _wow_. You can _do_ that?”

Skrah shrugged, settling back against the wall and taking his headset off. “We’re not going to get out of this just by hitting things, so I thought I’d test a couple theories. It wasn’t that hard.”

“Okay, so . . . how?”

“There’s a kind of wireless transmitter built into my control chip. I had to be able to tap into the security system at my old job,” Skrah explained. “It wasn’t too hard to move from that to Reploids’ bodies to this.” He sounded so casual about it that Axl wasn’t sure if he was being smug, or if he really didn’t think it anything special. “Anyway, when are we going to start? The more we stall, the more likely one of us is to lose a limb or worse.”

“I’m still sort of in the process of putting the steps together,” Axl assured. “There’s at least a couple units I know will stick with us.”

“Any help we can get is good, I suppose,” Skrah agreed.

Axl was relieved that his cellmate hadn’t immediately disagreed or tried to snap about not being so quick to trust others; at least for now, Skrah seemed willing to follow the gunner’s lead. “Since the door’s unlocked, suppose I’m gonna slip out and go find one of them to- ah . . . shit.”

“Besides the fact that I can’t imagine how you’re going to sneak around a gladiator arena undetected, why ‘ah shit’?”

“I haven’t got a damn clue where his room is.”

“That would be a problem,” Skrah mused. “I might be able to dig up a floor plan, but it’s going to take me some time to hack into the main system.”

“Oh yeah, that reminds me! Friend of mine gave me a schematic of the place; I downloaded it into my memory banks. You want?”

“Of course.”

There was silence for several minutes as Axl transferred over the data, secretly pleased that it felt like everything was slowly starting to fall into place. And having a conversation that wasn’t an argument didn’t hurt either. “I’ll start studying,” Skrah said with a nod. “Thanks.”

“Right then.” Axl hopped to his feet and stretched his arms over his head, searching through his processor for old protocols that he hadn’t had to pull up in quite some time. “Speaking of schematics, think I’m gonna go exploring for a bit. Is the door still unlocked?”

“Mm,” was the half-attentive reply, Skrah’s focus already appearing to have drifted to the floorplan in his memory banks.

“Awesome.” Axl shook his head in mild amusement, crossing the room and leaning so close to his cellmate that his nose almost touched the other’s in a ploy to get his attention. It worked, though the ensuing glare made Axl feel lucky that he didn’t get slugged in the jaw. “Back in twenty; send me a comm if you need something.”

“And how are you going to do that without being spotted? You’re not exactly subtle.”

Axl merely grinned, straightening up and giving him a thumbs-up before activating his Stealth Mode protocols and appearing to melt away into thin air. “See ya.”

He paused to scan for any nearby signals before slowly sliding open the door, knowing that to his cellmate’s eyes it would appear that the door was moving all on its own. “I’ll be damned,” he heard Skrah murmur as he snuck off. “Who would’ve guessed . . .”

True to his word, Axl returned about twenty minutes later, slipping inside with hardly a sound and flopping down on the bed with a grunt of exertion as he deactivated his stealth mode. “M’back,” he said, sounding winded as though he’d just run several laps around the arena. “Damn, that takes a lot more outta me than it used to . . .”

“You’re in luck then,” Skrah said. He was laying on his back with his arms folded behind his head and his posture unusually relaxed- or at least as close to relaxed as he could get. “We both get a day off. They just put up the brackets.”

“Oh yeah?” Axl sat up with a wince, his optics slipping in and out of focus for a few moments before he was able to read the screen on the wall. “Wonder who’s- oh _, shit_ . . .”

“Now why ‘oh shit’?”

“That one,” Axl said, indicating one of the names on the bracket. “Dennis. He’s one of the Reploids I talked into fighting on our side, him and his best friend.” He pointed to the other name on the bracket. “Jace.”

“You know, Axl . . .” Skrah said, slowly pushing himself into a sitting position. “I wasn’t kidding when I told you they break every Reploid who’s sent here. No one who has friends or allies keeps them for very long.”

A pause.

“And you don’t have to look, you know,” Skrah added quietly.

“I know,” Axl murmured, lifting his gaze to the monitor regardless as the view switched to the arena floor, where Jace and Dennis were already standing face to face.

“Th-this can’t be right!” Dennis cried, turning an alarmed, wide-eyed gaze on his friend. “I can’t fight you, Jace . . .”

The other Reploid, an elderly unit with long white hair and a stiff, formal posture, shook his head gently. “Calm yourself, little one. Fight as you’ve always trained.”

“I . . . I’ll try.”

“Good,” Jace said with a warm smile. In his left hand was a metal polearm that one might initially mistake for a walking stick, but as he gave it a twirl, it became apparent that it was a short staff. “May the better Reploid win, my friend.”

At first glance, it appeared that Jace would far outmatched by his younger companion’s speed, enforced by the way Dennis darted in for a swing and then darted right back out, one hand occasionally drifting to the revolver holstered at his side. “Excellent form,” Jace said. “You’ve been practicing. However . . .” He flicked out his staff, and Dennis tripped over it with a startled yelp, landing in a skid that scraped his cheek across the sandy floor. “Your footwork could use some refinement,” Jace chuckled.

“Aw, now you’re gonna get it old man!” A gleam of excitement began to return to Dennis’s eyes, and he sprang to his feet with renewed energy and darted back in to continue the fight.

“They’re both very skilled,” Skrah noted, his violet eyes following the two fighters back and forth across the screen. “Jace hasn’t even taken a step. The other one could stand for a little self-control though.”

“He’s young,” Axl pointed out, feeling a pang of mixed warmth and regret in his chest as he thought of his own spars with X. “He’ll learn. They’d both be an asset on our side.”

As Dennis paused to catch his breath, Jace looked up at the crowd, tapping the end of his staff on the ground idly. “I believe it is time we end this match, my friend. My endurance isn’t what it used to be.”

Without any further warning, Jace sprang forward with agility that far outpaced his elderly appearance, prompting a burst of cheers from the watching crowd. Dennis bent backwards to avoid a sharp swipe from his friend’s staff, dropping into a handstand and flipping over to regain his feet a short distance away.

For a few moments, it was all Dennis could do to avoid Jace’s staff, unable to pause and regain his momentum for even a moment in between frantic ducks and zigzags. “He’s not going to last,” Skrah pointed out.

“He’s used to range,” Axl said, Dennis’s movements now reminding him very much of himself fighting Zero as a rookie. “Once he let Jace get close, he panicked; now he can’t get his bearings long enough to get out of reach.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

Axl opened his mouth to retort, only for the words to catch in his throat as he saw Dennis grab for the revolver at his hip, ducking under another swipe and lifting the gun to point the barrel at his friend-

_Bang_!

Skrah jumped visibly at the sound of the gunshot, though Axl didn’t so much as blink, too used to the sharp crack to even flinch. Jace hit the ground with a dull thump, 

dark fluid pouring from the bullet hole in his chest and leaving a rapidly spreading pool under his lifeless chassis.

“J-Jace?” Dennis stammered, the revolver sliding from his limp fingers and landing on the ground with a clatter. No cheers came from the shocked crowd, and Jace made no sound that indicated whether he was in pain, or whether he had heard Dennis’s soft call. “Jace, get up,” Dennis begged, sinking to his knees and not even seeming to notice the sticky coolant under his legs. “Please, Jace . . .”

The elderly Reploid still gave no response.

As two guards approached and pulled Dennis to his feet, he began to panic, tugging frantically against their hold as if trying to scramble back to his friend’s side. “No! It’s a mistake! It was just a mistake! Jace, I didn’t mean to, it was an accident! _Jace_!”

The guards dragged him from the arena in spite of his screams and struggles, and a moment later the monitor on the wall of the cell went dark.

“Damn,” Skrah murmured after a long silence. “Another one down . . .” 

“Oh _hell_ , that poor kid,” Axl said. “I . . . I have to do something . . .”

“Like _what_? Unless you’ve forgotten, you can’t exactly run around doing whatever you please.”

“But _you_ can unlock things!” Axl insisted, barely remembering to keep his voice down as he scrambled to his feet and paced across the cell to the door. “I can go find him, I’m sure I can find his cell-”

“ _No_ , Axl!”

The gunner jumped, startled both by the sudden raise in his cellmate’s tone and by the hand grabbing onto his arm and giving him a rough jerk away from the door. “Don’t even _think_ about doing something that stupid,” Skrah hissed. “Your luck’s not going to hold forever and you’re _not_ risking everything and everyone here just to give one kid a hug.”

“But-”

“ _No_.”

Axl closed his eyes and let his head drop, his servos tensing with the effort of holding himself back from tearing his arm free and doing . . . well, something, he wasn’t really sure _what_ he could do if his cellmate wouldn’t give in and unlock the door for him. But he had to do _something_ , he had to . . . had to . . . do . . .

“Hey,” he said quietly, still keeping his head down as he tried to get his emotional side to stop overtaking his logical side. “Remember the other day, how I said I need an asshole like you to keep my idealistic ass in check?”

He felt Skrah’s grip on his arm loosen, and he let his shoulders slump as he lifted his gaze. “I meant it.”

“Good,” Skrah said with a nod, letting Axl go and giving him a light shove that was _almost_ affectionate. Almost. “Because after seeing that, I agree entirely.”

“That you’re an asshole?”

“That you’re still an idealistic moron.”

“Thanks for the support,” Axl said, sinking down onto his bed with a sigh. “Maybe I can get a lock on his comm signal . . .”

“Doubtful,” Skrah said. “Too many scramblers.”

“You sent me a comm the first time I escaped,” Axl pointed out. “Just before I warped, remember?”

“A fuzzy comm,” Skrah reminded him. “With a wireless chip built for hacking, a custom headset to amplify the signal, and a number of years of practice. Besides that, I’m still working on getting into the mainframe.”

“Have- you’ve been hacking this _entire time_?”

“Of course.”

Once again, Skrah was giving Axl that _duh_ look, and once again all Axl could do for several seconds was stare in shock. “Your focus is something else,” he said at last.

“It was my job for years, it’s instinct,” Skrah said with a mild shrug, though Axl swore he could detect a gleam of pride in his cellmate’s eyes.

“Well, it’s still better than I could do, so color me impressed.” Axl settled down on his back, closing his eyes and drawing another heavy sigh. “Still wish I could do something more for that poor kid . . .”

“I’m surprised that he fired in the first place,” Skrah mused, though it sounded as if his focus was beginning to drift- most likely back to his mainframe hack. “He didn’t seem very keen on the fight.”

“Nerves,” Axl said without opening his eyes. “Instincts, habit; I’ve done it before once or twice. You get so used to sparring with your weapon turned down to nonlethal, forget that you’ve ramped the power cell up when you got into deep shit. Luckily I never . . . hit anything vital, but . . .”

Skrah didn’t answer, and Axl turned his head, unsurprised to see his cellmate gazing at the floor in deep concentration, once again ignoring everything around him as he zoned in on his work. Not in the mood to spend another five minutes getting his attention, Axl rolled onto his side and closed his eyes again, determined to at least get some rest so he wouldn’t be caught napping in the middle of his next match.


	19. Chapter 19

The last thing Axl wanted to do the next day was spend several hours sparring Reploids he’d rather coax onto his side. But wishful thinking didn’t do much to stop the guards from banging on the door, so away to spar he went, wisely keeping his distance from his cellmate so as not to give away their newfound alliance. Instead, he found a quiet spot to sit off to the side and out of the way, ever-watchful teal eyes drifting restlessly across the room in search of possible allies. He was so intent on scoping out his fellow units that he almost didn’t notice his cellmate being called over to spar- and when the movement in the corner of his eye finally did catch his attention, he felt his core sink.

Dennis was being herded toward the ring by a pair of guards, his gaze focused on the ground and no weapon visible either in his hand or at his hip. He lifted his head long enough to give Skrah a blank, tired stare for a few moments before looking down at the ground again as though he hardly had the will to stand, much less fight.

“Well, go on,” one of the guards prompted impatiently. “Don’t stand there staring, get to it!”

Axl curled his hands to grip the edge of the bench he was sitting on, all of his instincts screaming at him to get up and _do_ something, he’d _seen_ Skrah in a spar before, he had to do something but he couldn’t risk giving them away so soon . . . !

Instead of doing as the guard said, Skrah took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest, his expression giving nothing away as usual. “No,” he said simply.

“What do you mean _no_?” the lead guard said.

“I mean _no_ ,” Skrah replied, casting a cold glare in the guard’s direction. “There’s no point in sparring with an opponent who won’t even try to fight back.”

As if to prove his point, he took two paces forward and gave Dennis a shove with one hand, and while the younger Reploid stumbled at the force, he made no effort to defend himself or catch his balance. “Quit wasting my time and give me someone who’s willing to put up a fight,” he snapped.

There was a pause, Axl gripping the edge of the bench so hard that his knuckles began to ache.

He felt as if an entire ceiling had been lifted off of his shoulders when the guard finally gave in and ordered Dennis to sit down, though the relief only lasted a moment before the guard spoke again. “Spiky, you there! You’re up next.”

“Aw, hell,” Axl muttered under his breath, getting to his feet and reluctantly making his way over to the ring.

All the same, the match seemed to calm Axl’s nerves for the time being, forcing him to forget the rest of his growing problems and focus on the moment- mostly on how goddamn fast his cellmate moved and how goddamn much it would probably hurt to end up with a broken nose from all this. He couldn’t exactly say that it seemed like Skrah was holding back, but at the same time he also didn’t seem to be quite as murderous as he usually was. Axl figured he should take any small blessing he could get at this point.

He was just starting to settle into a rhythm and begin to get a read on his cellmate’s movements when a screech of rage rang out somewhere across the room, startling both Axl and Skrah into stumbling to an awkward halt. Axl instinctively spun toward the sound, his eyes widening in shock when he saw that Dennis had somehow gotten one of the guards pinned to the ground. “Hey-!”

The gunner started to move toward his friend, only for a hand to grab him by the shoulder and jerk him backwards, forcibly spinning him around just in time for a fist to strike the side of his face with an audible _crack_. “Son of a _bitch_!” he yelped. “What the hell was that for?!”

“Don’t turn your back in the middle of a fight, Axl!” Skrah hissed, his stance still tensed and ready for another swing.

Axl opened his mouth to snap a retort, only to cringe visibly when he heard Dennis screech again, the sound this time full of pain and accompanied by the crackling of electricity. He turned to see two guards hauling the young Reploid to his feet, but before he could move to help, Skrah lunged for him again, this time grabbing onto the gunner’s arm and wrenching it behind his back. “ _Ow_!” Axl yelped. “Ow Skrah my arm doesn’t bend that way, let _go of me_ , why do you have so much fun dislocating my shoulder anyway!”

“I told you to pay attention!” Skrah growled, though he didn’t twist so hard as to actually snap his cellmate’s shoulder. “Quit wasting my time and start fighting back!”

“I said let go of my _arm_!” Axl reached around to grab his pistol with his free hand, flipping the weapon around backwards and swinging it around to strike the blunt end of the grip against the side of Skrah’s head, missing as Skrah dodged and nailing him in the jaw instead. The sudden retaliation was still enough to cause Skrah to loosen his hold enough for Axl to free his arm, and the gunner quickly regained his bearings and whipped around in a roundhouse kick, using the jets on his ankles to lend extra power to the movement.

Skrah responded surprisingly fast, taking a step to one side and pivoting his body to catch Axl’s knee in the crook of his elbow. He gave his arm a twist, and Axl was quick to shift his weight so that the momentum carried him into a safe skid several feet away.

This really, _really_ wasn’t in his favor; the arena was too small for him to get any good distance, and just like the last time they’d fought, Skrah seemed intent on not letting up the pressure for a second. Axl found himself hard-pressed just to keep his guard up, much less do anything besides play defense and search for an opening.

His core tightened at the thought of how damn _lucky_ he was that someone like this was on his side now.

Or supposedly on his side, right now he was mostly convinced that his cellmate was being a fucking asshole. Axl was sure that somewhere in cyberspace, Zero was scolding him for always being reluctant to put in more practice at close range, but it wasn’t like he could really do a lot about that _now_ with someone taking a swing for any lapse in his defense. If he could just get enough of a break to get his gun in the right position-

As he thought as much, Skrah darted forward once again, and Axl reflexively raised his left arm to shield his face. Instead of throwing a punch, however, Skrah uncurled his fist to jab his fingertips hard into Axl’s upper arm, just below the armor covering his shoulder. Axl’s eyes widened in shock as all of the circuits in his left arm suddenly seemed to offline, the limb falling limp and useless at his side.

He’d instinctively taken several quick steps back as soon as he was hit, but as grabbed his gun with his right hand and started to raise it, Skrah jabbed at him again, this time in the bicep. Axl made a noise of mingled pain and surprise as the lower half of that arm went dead too, his gun clattering from his fingers just before a foot planted itself in his stomach hard enough to land him flat on his back.

Winded, he started to try to sit up- not that it was going to be an easy task considering _he couldn’t feel either of his arms_ \- only for Skrah to land on his stomach hard enough to drive the breath out of him again, one spike-lined arm pressing down on the gunner’s collarbone threateningly. “Asimov, you win already!” Axl panted. “You win, okay!”

For a moment, Axl wasn’t sure that his cellmate was even listening, his expression as cross as usual and his violet eyes unreadable. Then, Skrah slowly stood up, the spikes on his forearm retracting into his armor with a snap as he backed away without a word. “Was that enough entertainment for you?” one of the guards sneered.

Skrah turned to flash them a glare before turning and striding away, still not saying a word as he settled down onto one of the benches to rest. Axl noted with a mild spark of amusement that every other Reploid sitting on said bench shifted at least two feet away as Skrah sat down.

It took several moments of awkward scooting and grunting before Axl managed to get to his feet, both arms still dangling uselessly at his sides. Tired and aching from the fight, he flashed Skrah a sour look and then turned to find a seat across the room, preferably somewhere quiet and _not_ near his stupid cranky cellmate, kicking his gun across the floor with him as he moved. This was going to turn into an all-kinds-of-fun argument once they were back in their cell, he was _sure_ of that much.

To Axl’s relief, he could move both of his arms again by the time sparring was done for the day and everyone had been ushered back to their cells, though he could still feel a steady throb in both of the spots Skrah had jabbed him, not to mention the ache from being kicked in the stomach. Once the guard had shut the door, Axl turned to face his cellmate, not yet moving for his bed and instead simply giving Skrah an expectant look with his eyebrows raised as if to say _well_?

“Are you that pissed off?” Skrah muttered, settling down on his bed and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Little bit,” Axl replied. “I’m lucky I can still use both my arms.”

“Quit griping, they’re just pressure points,” Skrah grumbled. “Hit the right spot with a direct enough force and it causes a signal misfire that takes the circuits offline, at least until the main system can force a reboot.”

“Fascinating,” Axl said dryly, though he was sure that he actually _would_ find it fascinating if he was in a better mood. “Care to explain why you tried to break my jaw then?”

To Axl’s surprise, Skrah averted his gaze, almost looking a bit embarrassed- _almost_. “I had to,” he said quietly.

“You had to break my jaw?”

“ _No_.” Skrah jerked his head to beckon Axl closer, and the gunner hesitated for a moment before crossing the room to sit down on the bed next to his cellmate. “We can’t give anything away to the guards, Axl, not _yet_. If they think we’re allies then we’ll end up in the same situation your friend did.” He paused, frowning and once again averting his gaze. “And I wasn’t . . . going to kill you or anything. I held back.”

Axl opened his mouth to argue against that fact, and only then did he remember that not once during their spar had Skrah activated the plasma blades on his elbows. He _had_ held back, at least so that his attacks would be shy of lethal or bone-shattering. “Well,” the gunner said at last. “I guess that means we’re one and one. So . . . pressure points, huh?”

“I . . . yeah. Pressure points,” Skrah said, blinking in mild surprise at Axl’s sudden shift in mood. “So you’re _not_ pissed?”

“I’m over it,” Axl said with a shrug. “Sore, but I get it.”

“You sure changed your tone quick.”

“I trust you,” Axl explained simply. “And grudges are boring. But you _do_ owe me one for almost breaking my jaw, don’t you think?”

Skrah drew a sigh, and Axl smirked knowingly, teal eyes gleaming as he sensed his cellmate beginning to cave. “Depends on what it is,” Skrah said.

“I want to talk to Dennis.”

“I’m still not letting you out of here to wander around on your own again. And I told you, there’s too much interference for you to get a comm signal.”

“ _I_ can’t get a comm signal,” Axl said. “But _you_ can. You’ve done it before, right?”

“Axl, I hardly think _I’m_ the best person to be talking to him right now . . .”

“You don’t have to. Just get his comm signal and tap me into it and I’ll take it from there. He’ll be in solitary all by himself for at least the rest of the day, come on Skrah, _please_?”

Skrah hesitated a moment longer, though Axl could still sense that he was on the verge of giving in by the subtle change in his expression- very subtle, but a change nonetheless. “Don’t . . . give me that look!” Skrah said. “I’ll help, alright, just stop making that face at me!” He picked up his headset with a defeated sigh, grumbling to himself as he looped Axl into his signal. “Who ever heard of a Maverick Hunter making puppy eyes anyway . . .”

“Always seemed to work on Zero too,” Axl said with a grin. Skrah shoved him in response, and Axl obediently got to his feet and loped across the room to splay out on his own bed. It took him a visible effort to wait patiently and not ask, ‘Are you done yet? How about now? Now?’ every few seconds, but he didn’t think it was worth getting punched in the face a second time for the day.

“There,” Skrah said what felt like an eternity later. “I’m patching you in. You should be locked onto his signal, assuming he even answers you in the first place.”

“Here goes nothing then,” Axl murmured. The signal was a bit fuzzy, and he could definitely sense the presence of the numerous scramblers meant to prevent him from doing exactly this, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in this case. “Dennis? Dennis, can you hear me? It’s me, Axl.”

Silence.

“Dennis? You there?”

“How . . . how’d you get my signal?” a soft, weary voice piped up.

“Had some help,” Axl replied vaguely. “That’s my little secret for now. How you holding up, kid?”

There was a pause, and Axl was about to prompt his friend for an answer when Dennis spoke up again. “That guard called me a murderer, Axl.”

Well, Axl mused to himself silently, it was no wonder said guard had taken a thrashing if they’d been stupid enough to call someone in that kind of emotional state a murderer to their face. “Dennis, you’re not-”

“But they’re _right_!” Dennis cried. “I killed my _best friend_! He trusted me and . . . and I . . .”

Axl hesitated a moment, desperately searching for the right words and wondering what in the name of Asimov X would say if he were here right now. X had _always_ known the right things to say. “Why did you pull the trigger?” he asked at last.

“I . . . I always do,” Dennis said softly. “Whenever we’d practice, I’d always have the power cell almost shut down, so I thought . . . I thought that . . .”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Axl said. “I’ve done the same thing before; it’s . . . pretty scary when your gun goes off when you’re not expecting it.”

“But you didn’t _kill_ anyone!”

Axl frowned, feeling an old ache welling up in his chest as a wave of memories struck through his core. “Not like that,” he said, “but I know what it feels like.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my fault . . .”

“I know,” Axl murmured. “I know it doesn’t . . .”

“Then why are you even bothering,” the younger Reploid choked out, his voice beginning to crack.

“Because we’re friends,” Axl replied softly. “And that means I give a shit, especially when you’re-”

“Leave me _alone_ , Axl . . .”

The gunner frowned, calling Dennis’s name several more times, but his friend’s end of the comm had gone dead, either by way of Dennis ignoring him or just shutting his comm down entirely. “Dammit,” Axl muttered, nodding to his cellmate to let the signal drop. “I don’t know that I got through to him . . .”

“You did what you could,” Skrah said, taking off his headset for a moment to rub his temples. “You can’t fix everything Axl.”

“I _know_ , but I _want_ to.”

Skrah shook his head, putting his headset back on and settling down on his bed more comfortably. “I’m still not through to the mainframe,” he said. “It’s going to take some more time.”

“You . . .” Axl hesitated, trying to choose his words carefully for fear of pissing his cellmate off now that they were just beginning to get along. “You could’ve done hacks like this any time, right? I mean, before I got here?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I . . . was scared of the consequences,” Skrah said with a slight shrug. “To put it simply.”

“And you’re not any more?”

There was another pause before Skrah shook his head once more, sitting back with a grunt and focusing his gaze on the floor. “I need to focus, Axl.”

“All right,” Axl said, taking that as an unspoken ‘of course I’m still scared you moron’. “But do you think you can do one more thing for me?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Can you get a comm signal through to someone on the outside?”

Skrah looked up, narrowing his eyes in thought for a few moments before giving a slow, almost hesitant nod. “I think so,” he said. “But not today. My head’s already starting to hurt. I’ll work on it, all right?”

“Deal,” Axl said with a slight smile, settling down on his bed for a nap. “And by the way, you’re still a jackass.”

“Takes one to know one,” Skrah replied without skipping a beat.


	20. Chapter 20

“Wake up, lazyass. You can’t spend all day in bed, you know.”

“I can try,” Axl said, lifting his head with a grumble of protest. All the same, it was nice to have his roommate shake him awake by the arm instead of punching him in the ribs for once. “You’re as bad as Zero.”

He sat up, yawning and arching his back in a stretch before hopping to his feet. “Brackets already up?”

“Yes, but it’s different this time,” Skrah said. “All it says is that we’re fighting tandem, nothing about who we’re up against. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them put a bracket like this up before.”

“That’s a little shocking,” Axl said, rolling his shoulders to loosen his servos up after the long sleep on his uncomfortably hard bed. “What, they figure after the way you punched me out yesterday we’ll hate each other so much that we’ll kill each other?”

“Something like that,” Skrah said. “They aren’t giving up today until they’ve got an open space; they’ve got some new arrivals on the way soon.”

“How do you figure-” Axl paused, a slow smile beginning to spread over his face. “You got into the mainframe.”

“While you were across the room snoring,” Skrah replied, the closest thing to a joke he was probably ever going to make. “Either way, you know how they get when they’re determined to off someone. I . . . have a really bad feeling about today.”

“Well, then let’s watch each other’s backs and prove them wrong,” Axl said, twirling his pistol idly on his index finger. “That’s how friends work, right?

“R . . . right. You’re right. But as far as the guards know-”

“As always,” Axl said. “But spare me the punch to the face today, will you?”

“I’ll keep it under consideration.”

As the guards came to escort them to their match, Axl did everything he could to make it seem like he was keeping his distance, hoping that the guards would think him intimidated after yesterday’s spar. Only when the guards led them up to the door and stepped back did he fall into line next to his cellmate, squinting against the familiar, harsh light as they stepped into the arena. “You ready to do this?”

Skrah nodded, his violet eyes sharp and clear with focus and that familiar old scowl back on his features as he flexed his fingers, curling and uncurling his fists in preparation for the fight to come. “All I want to do today is survive,” he replied simply.

“That’s what I wanna hear,” Axl said with a grin.

The arena floor and walls shifted and wavered around them, and Axl turned, motioning for Skrah to do the same so they could stand back-to-back. “Good terrain today,” Axl said, eyes traveling over the desert-like environment, littered with rocks and debris that he could use to his advantage for hiding or sniping.

“Says you,” Skrah muttered crossly.

“What, scared of tripping a few rocks?”

“I don’t need to hide behind a rock to win a fight. Unless you’ve forgotten about yesterday.”

“Now you’re just being mean,” Axl said, his tone light and teasing. “Unless _you’ve_ forgotten that we’re one and one; you asking for a tiebreaker?”

“Another time,” Skrah said, his shoulders tensing against Axl’s back. “We’ve got incoming.”

Small, glowing orbs of light were beginning to appear on the rocks all around them, each orb gradually taking shape as a small unit with a rounded yellow helmet covering most of its body. “It’s a simulation,” Axl said, his hand tightening against the grip of his pistol. “I _knew_ this felt like a sim deck, I used to train on these every day!”

“Fascinating,” Skrah said dryly. “So if it’s a sim, can these things still hurt us?”

“They can very definitely hurt us,” Axl said. The simulation still seemed to be loading, more and more of the yellow helmets taking form on all sides of the area. “What’s your familiarity with mob fights?”

“Not my specialty.”

“Great.” Axl’s face split into a grin, and all of the simulated Mettaurs surged forward in a wave of clanking yellow helmets. “In that case, if you wanna keep living then follow my lead!”

For the first time since he’d been dug out of the underground mine, Axl felt as though he was in his element, every movement smooth and natural even with the added pressure of keeping an eye on his combat partner. It was clear at a glance that Skrah was far more used to one-on-one matches, but he seemed to pick up on Axl’s tactics quickly, adjusting his stance to compensate and tightening his swings to shore up the openings in his defenses. “Hey, not bad!” Axl called, pleased to be able to snipe from the safety of a relatively tall rock. “You’re a natural at this!”

“Not now, Axl,” Skrah grunted, lifting a Mettaur into the air with a swift kick and exposing its underside to his plasma blades. “I’ve never seen you kill anything before,” he added sourly. “Even a simulated thing.”

“That’s the cranky jackass I know,” Axl said with a laugh, three quick shots taking down three more of their foes. “Even if they _weren’t_ simulated, they’re just drones. It’s different.”

“Guess I still don’t understand the way your mind works,” Skrah muttered, kicking another Mettaur into the air and taking it out with a sharp jab of his knee. “There’s too damn many of these things!”

“Keep going!” Axl said. “Kick ‘em up towards me so I can get at their undersides!”

“With pleasure.”

Axl was almost disappointed when the Mettaurs finally stopped appearing, Skrah taking out the last few stragglers that crawled over the rocks while Axl slid down to the ground to join him. Skrah looked just slightly winded, though Axl was sure he’d be fine once he caught his breath. “You learn fast,” Axl said. “I’m impressed.”

Skrah nodded half-attentively, his shoulders still tensed as he turned his head to scan the field. “It was too easy,” he said. “They’re going to throw something else at us but I’m not getting a lock on any signals. The active deck’s messing with my scans.”

“Yeah, poorly programmed sim decks can do that if you’re not used to them,” Axl said, his own proximity sweeps on high alert. “There’s so many active devices that-”

He broke off as one of his scans brought up an incoming object alert in his left optic- a _large_ object, no less- and instinct had him darting to shove his cellmate out of the way with a shout of, “Get down!” Skrah’s grunt of surprise was drowned out by the resounding _clang_ as said large object slammed into the left side of Axl’s chest hard enough to knock him off of his feet and send him careening into the nearest large rock.

Axl groaned out several swear words in Russian as he dragged himself to his feet, shoving aside the heavy spiked morningstar that had activated his ‘incoming large heavy object’ alert. He shook his head to clear his sensors, his ears still ringing from the impact, and he was vaguely aware enough of someone distantly yelling, “Axl _move_!” to let instinct take over again and duck down with his arms covering his head.

His attacker’s fist shattered the nearest rock in one swing, and Axl broke into a hard sprint, only spinning around once he was sure that he had a good distance between himself and his newfound opponent. He turned just in time to see Skrah leaping into combat with plasma blades swinging, his tall, silver-armored opponent grabbing the morningstar from the ground and raising it in a swift block. “Long time no see, huh Vaile,” Axl muttered to himself. “Someone’s been working hard.”

The gunner sprang back into action, bullets pouring from the barrel of his gun as he darted for higher ground once again. “Don’t focus on the bullets!” he called when Skrah flinched at the sound of gunfire. “I’ve done this for years, you won’t be hit! Just fight like I’m not here!”

“Easier said than done,” Skrah muttered, followed by a grunt as he raised both arms to block an overhead swing.

No allies, Axl reminded himself, sprinting in close and then dancing away again to draw some of Vaile’s attention away from his cellmate. Allies got killed here, he knew that. “Forget the stupid grudge for right now and work with me so we can survive this!”

Little by little, Skrah and Axl began to gain the upper hand, a combination of swift punches and sharp plasma bullets pushing Vaile ever closer to the tangle of rocks near the arena wall. “Keep it up,” Axl panted, not particularly enjoying the need to dart in so close but continuing to do so nonetheless to keep the pressure off of his combat partner. This certainly didn’t feel like the same Reploid he’d beaten just by luring him into a wall, that was for sure. “We’ve got this, Skrah, keep it up!”

Vaile lunged toward Axl, and the gunner sprang back with his arms raised to defend himself, only for his opponent to turn mid-swing and slam the pole of his morningstar into Skrah’s stomach, sending the gladiator sliding backwards and sinking to his knees with his arms wrapped around his midsection. Axl started to move to take up a defensive stance in front of his friend, but before he could take more than a step, Vaile’s hand clamped around his upper body, swinging him into the air and smashing him into the nearest rock hard enough to make the gunner’s circuits ring with the impact once again. “Long . . . long time no see,” Axl wheezed out, wincing as Vaile grabbed onto his gun hand and pinned his wrist to the rock as well, bringing the spikes of his morningstar dangerously close to the gunner’s head. “Dammit . . .”

“I’m surprised to see you two fighting tandem,” Vaile grunted, tightening his hold on the gunner’s weapon hand. “Figured you would’ve killed each other by now.”

“Believe me,” Axl said, wiggling in place in a vain effort to free his arms. “It wasn’t exactly my idea. You’re not half bad at the whole fighting thing when you’re focused.”

“It became a matter of survival,” Vaile snorted. “I gotta admit though, I’m halfway impressed. It was either really brave of you to keep coming back, or really stupid. You’ve almost gained my respect.”

“Thanks,” Axl said. “I think. So does that mean you’re maybe _not_ gonna break my neck?”

“Nice try, kid. But no dice.”

“Who you calling kid, I’m a century older than you,” Axl grumbled, hoping to stall for just a few seconds longer, long enough for his cellmate to get close enough for a good punch-

And get close he did, but Vaile spun and brought Axl away from the wall, swinging him toward Skrah and letting go as the two Reploids collided, sending them tumbling to the ground in a tangled heap. “Get up, move, move!” Axl said, shoving Skrah off of him as soon as they landed and scrambling to dive out of the way. “Don’t stop, Skrah!”

Vaile’s morningstar crashed down on the rocky turf where the two Reploids had been mere moments ago, sending up a spray of dirt and pebbles. “Axl, get me an opening!” Skrah called, back on his feet but still holding his stomach and visibly struggling for breath.

“You got it!” Axl said, feeling a swell of pride that his cellmate was beginning to trust him enough to rely on him in combat. “Hey, Vaile! Over here big guy!”

He whistled loudly, raising his gun to pelt his opponent with bullets that were so low-powered that they were more annoying than damaging. “C’mon you big bucket of scrap, I slipped free last time! You gonna hang back and make faces at me or you wanna try again?”

Vaile started toward him with a snarl, and Axl cracked a grin, keeping light on his toes and darting in close every time his opponent’s attention started to drift, weak bullets of plasma and a dangerous distance game pulling Vaile’s focus back where Axl needed it to be- specifically, on himself, and not on his cellmate. Vaile had clearly improved a lot, but he was still no match for Axl’s speed and footwork. “Come on, Skrah,” he muttered to himself, skittering backwards and narrowly avoiding a heavy swing. “I can’t keep this up forever . . .”

For just a moment, Axl caught Skrah’s eye, his cellmate nodding almost imperceptibly, and the gunner darted in close, zigzagging back and forth to avoid Vaile’s swings and leaping up to plant his left foot on the larger Reploid’s shoulder. “Still can’t catch me!” he jeered, the jets on his ankles humming as he pushed off into a leap.

His opponent’s hand latched onto his foot, but only for a moment before there was a loud _thud_ as Skrah’s fist plowed into the soft, exposed synth-flesh of Vaile’s side, just above his hip bone. Vaile went rigid with a strangled noise of pain, letting go of Axl’s foot and allowing the gunner to land neatly on a pile of shattered rocks. “Whoa whoa whoa easy!” he called as Skrah started toward their fallen opponent. “Skrah wait!”

Axl leapt down from the rocks and darted over to his cellmate’s side, holding an arm out to stop him in his tracks and stumbling backwards when Skrah gave him a rough shove. “ _Easy_ ,” Axl repeated, barely managing not to flinch under the other unit’s cold glare. “It’s over, Skrah. We won.”

“It’s not . . . it doesn’t feel right,” Skrah said. “It was just a pressure point, he’s not going to stay down there forever. If we leave him for long enough he’ll just-”

“I _know_ ,” Axl said as the simulated desert environment wavered for a few seconds before disappearing, leaving only the arena’s shiny, smooth floors and walls all around them. “But we’ll be fine. The guards are already coming over, see? And . . . and they’re holding something.”

An almost imperceptible flash of fear crossed Skrah’s expression, and he took a step back, his shoulder bumping clumsily against Axl’s as he moved. “ _Shit_ ,” he muttered through his teeth. “We’re as good as dead, Axl . . .”

“Care to explain so I have some context?” Axl replied in an equally quiet voice, taking a step away and pretending to be offended that Skrah had bumped into him. Keeping up a facade like this was _hard_. “They’re just . . . talking to each other . . .”

“They’re . . .” Skrah slowly raised a hand to adjust his headset, the gesture so subtle that it could’ve easily passed for a nervous tic. “They’re waiting to see what we do. See that crossbow the one on the left is holding?”

“Yeah, I see it,” Axl replied, biting back a completely unnecessary addition of, ‘I want one’. “What, they wanna fight now too?”

“Don’t be stupid, Axl,” Skrah hissed. “I saw them use that thing once before; there was a known troublemaker who got too rowdy during a spar. They were far from being a crowd favorite, so the guards shot them. With that.”

Axl winced at the thought, not needing any further details to know that the troublemaking Reploid had only been shot _once_. Once was all they’d needed. “So what do we do?”

“I don’t _know_ , Axl, but they’re going to kill one of us and they’re not-”

Skrah’s sentence broke off into a loud yell of pain, Axl following suit a moment later as the metal ring that had been locked around his wrist since his arrival suddenly whirred into activation, sending jolts of electricity up his arm and through his chest and shoulders. The gunner strained to turn his head back toward the guards, his legs shaking with the effort of keeping his feet and panic racing through his core when he saw the crossbow pointed at him from across the arena.

He was vaguely aware of a thunk somewhere next to him as his cellmate sank to his knees, a scraping sound as though someone was struggling to their feet, and the sharp, airy _twang_ of the crossbow’s draw being released. The gunner racked his brain for a solution, but with the paralyzing electricity surging through his circuits he was unable to do anything except _stare_ , stare at the small, deadly bolt sailing through the air toward his neck-

Until something thudded into his side, hard enough to send him sprawling sideways and crashing to the ground, and a moment later the electricity stopped, and suddenly everything was eerily silent. But he was . . . he was _alive_ , someone must’ve shoved him, which meant . . .

“Oh, hell no,” Axl mumbled, pushing himself up with a groan and feeling every circuit still tingling with excess electricity. “Skrah-”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Skrah snapped, though the way he was still on his knees and visibly shaken indicated that he was anything but. “I’m fine, Axl.”

Axl turned, his eyes widening in shock and horror when he saw the other unit prone on the ground nearby. “Holy shit, _Vaile_?”

He made a clumsy scramble to the fallen Reploid’s side, not daring to touch him the moment he saw that the arrow was sending repeated pulses of electricity through Vaile’s circuits. “That was you,” Axl said. “You shoved me out of the way, didn’t you?”

Vaile simply groaned, the powerful shocks already taking their toll to the point where he could barely even lift his head. “Why?” Axl asked softly.

“You won,” Vaile replied hoarsely, followed by a broken, stuttering groan as the arrow sent another pulse through his circuits. “You didn’t deserve to die.”

“Neither did you!” Axl protested. “Besides, I thought you hated me.”

“Told you,” Vaile grunted, his eyes fuzzing over with static for a moment before he blinked it away and fixed the gunner with a halfhearted glare. “You almost earned my respect.” He lifted a hand for a moment, as though trying to swing it toward Axl in an ineffectual swat. “Now go . . . piss off, stupid little . . .”

His voice trailed off as one last surge of electricity jolted through his circuits, his body going rigid for a moment before his eyes and expression went blank. “That’s . . . that’s it,” Skrah panted nearby, and Axl turned his head to see the guard across the arena lowering the crossbow. “They got their death. We won.”

Axl nodded mutely, getting to his feet with an unexpected ache in his core. Sure, he’d never had anything close to a pleasant conversation with Vaile, but this still made one more person that he’d failed to save.

He was still mulling over as much as he and Skrah were led back to their cell, the gunner’s distant, distracted gaze fixed on the ground. “What are you so upset over?” Skrah asked once the guards had shut the door and left them alone.

“He’s _dead_ , Skrah,” Axl said, sinking down onto his bed with a sigh. “Someone else is dead and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. _Again_.”

“He tried to kill you,” Skrah pointed out. “More than once.”

“So did you,” Axl shot back. “He _protected_ me, Skrah.”

“He wouldn’t have _needed_ to protect you if you hadn’t held me back in the first place! Axl I _know_ you’re determined to save everyone you ever meet but you _can’t_ and it’s going to get you killed!”

“I know!” Axl paused, swallowing back an wave of swears in Russian and taking a deep breath to calm himself down. “I know. But we need _allies_ to get out of this, not enemies.”

Skrah crossed his arms, annoyance still sparking in his eyes, but when he spoke again his voice was significantly quieter. “And you think Vaile could’ve been one of those allies.”

“I think anyone who’s willing to fight for their survival has the potential to be one of those allies.”

The two Reploids held one another’s gazes for a few moments longer before Skrah sat down on his bed with a sigh, some of the tense frustration loosening from his shoulders. “I’ll never understand the way you think, Axl,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead tiredly. “Do you still want that outside comm line?”

“If you can get through, yeah,” Axl said, perking up slightly as he sent the relevant comm signature over to his cellmate. “There’s a friend of mine who should be able to bring in some help.”

“Right. Give me a couple hours, I’ll see what I can do.”

Axl nodded, laying down on his bed to relax and catch a nap- and keep himself quiet so that his cellmate could focus. Not that Skrah tended to hear much anyway when he was trying to focus, but Axl didn’t think it was worth the risk of aggravating him.

He’d just begun to doze off when a triumphant, “Got it!” jerked him awake, the gunner making a drowsy noise of protest and rubbing his eyes as he rolled over. “You’re in?”

“Out, rather,” Skrah replied, a subtle glint of pride in his eyes. “They’ve really got this place locked down tight; it took me almost an hour to get through the scramblers but-”

“Spare me the details,” Axl said with a grin. “You can tell me all about it at bedtime to bore me to sleep. You’re sure no one’s gonna find out?”

“No one except your contact,” Skrah said. “If they didn’t notice me trying to hack into the mainframe, they’re not going to notice this. Everything’s got dummy coding layered on it so that the signals blend in seamlessly.”

“Didn’t I just say to spare me the details?” Axl teased, sitting up and arching his back in a stretch. “Ready to patch me in?”

Skrah nodded, falling silent for a moment before looking up and nodding a second time. “You’re through. I’m going to drop the signal once you’re done, so make it count. I need the focus to secure my connection to the mainframe.”

“Roger that,” Axl said as he picked up the signal, immediately amazed at how many layers of coding Skrah had laid on top of it. “C’mooooon, pick up,” he muttered. “You better not be in the shower, pick _up_ dammit . . .”

“Axl?” someone piped up a moment later.

“ _Yes_!” Axl hissed. “Skrah, you’re officially my favorite person right now. Xan, can you hear me? Is the signal clear?”

“Axl, how- I mean, yes, you’re coming through loud and clear, what’s up?”

“Thank my cellmate,” Axl said with a grin. “He’s listening in. Well, sort of listening in, I can’t tell if he’s paying attention or not.”

“I’m listening,” Skrah said without looking up.

Axl rolled his eyes in mild amusement, shaking his head and deciding to leave his friend be for now. “How you holding up, Xan?”

“Busy,” the human replied. “I lost count of the number of trips I made to Anacua, but it’s paying off. And so is what you’ve been up to, for that matter- you’re all over the news.”

“I am?”

“Your last two matches,” Xan said. “People are finally starting to take notice, Axl.”

“Then it sounds like now’s the opportune time to do something about it,” Axl mused. “How are things in Anacua?”

“Not perfect, but getting better,” Xan said. “Your little performances in your recent matches have certainly helped, and so did the memory files you gave me.” There was a pause, followed by the rattle of datapads being shuffled across a desk. “They’ve agreed to provide some measure of reinforcements when we need them. Medics and transport, mostly, and a few officers just in case.”

“That’s more than I hoped for,” Axl said. “You are so my favorite right now, Xan.”

Skrah looked up, and Axl smiled innocently, raising his hands in a helpless shrug. “I can have two favorites.”

“You’re impossible,” Skrah said flatly.

“Takes one to know one,” Axl said with a wave of his hand. “Xan, that’s Skrah. He’s a jackass.”

“Ah . . . pleasure, I’m sure,” Xan said. “Regardless, Axl, I need a timeframe if you’ve got one. The more notice I can give our allies in Anacua, the more help we’ll get, I’m sure.”

“The sooner the better,” Skrah put in. “We’re still risking our necks in here every day, and I’d like to get out before one of us gets brutally murdered.”

“How about three days then?” Axl suggested.

Skrah nodded, and Xan fell silent for a few moments to mull that over before answering. “Three days it is,” they said. “I’ll make another trip to Anacua today and get everything settled.”

“Sounds good,” Axl said with a nod. “I’ve been told that this is my one phone call, so . . . unless you hear about either of us biting it in the next three days, assume we’re going through with it.”

“Roger that,” Xan said. “I’ve got a lot to take care of, so unless there’s anything else?”

Axl looked at Skrah for confirmation, and his cellmate shrugged mildly in response. “Nothing on my end.”

“Then we’re good to go,” Axl said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

“All right,” Xan said. “Then I’ll see you in a few days, Axl. And you as well, Skrah.”

“Mm,” was Skrah’s half-attentive reply, his attention apparently already on hacking something else.

“Told you he’s a jackass,” Axl said. “Til then, Xan.”

“Until then.”

The comm line closed with a click, and Axl sat back, taking a deep breath to quell his sudden wave of nervous almost-nausea. “So now the countdown begins for real,” Axl murmured.

“I’m already working on the next step,” Skrah said. “We’ll need a secure comm line between the two of us in case we get separated. Should be much easier than breaking through to the outside . . .”

Axl frowned, amazed at his cellmate’s ability to stay focused even with what loomed overhead in three days time. “Hey . . .”

For once, Skrah looked up at the first call, his violet eyes sharp, yet more inquisitive and determined than annoyed by the interruption.

“Thanks,” Axl said. “For everything you’re doing. It . . . it really means a lot. And it’s . . . it feels easier knowing you’re with me on this.”

Skrah blinked in surprise, and for just a moment, a hint of genuine pride and almost _warmth_ crossed his expression. “You’re welcome,” he replied softly.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh shit's getting real. Shit's getting real real fast.

“Axl, you know you have a match in ten minutes right?”

The gunner whined in protest, quickly wiggling into a sitting position just in time to stop Skrah from jabbing him in the side. “I’m up, I’m up! Jeez, haven’t you ever heard of a nap before . . .”

“Hardly fair that you get to nap while I’m awake doing all the hard work.”

“ _I’m_ not the one with a wireless hacking chip,” Axl pointed out. “And you’re not much for conversation when you’re working. I got _bored_.”

“How do you even manage to nap for hours at a time like that?”

“By not being an obnoxiously light sleeper like you?”

“Point taken.” Skrah crossed the room back to his own bed and sat down, rubbing his temples tiredly. “Be careful out there today. I overheard some of the guards talking about ‘forcing his hand’ while I was hunting down signals. I’d like to say that I hope they don’t mean yours, but . . .”

“But I’m not exactly popular.” Axl got to his feet, instinctively settling his hand on the pistol at his hip. “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Don’t get reckless, Axl. We’re making our move _tomorrow_ , the last thing everyone here needs is for you to get brutally murdered.”

“I know, I know,” Axl said. “I’m not keen on getting brutally murdered either. Stay in contact. It’ll be good practice.”

“Will do, though I think you’re the one who needs practice.”

“You’re a riot, Skrah.”

The gunner’s fingers were twitching with nervous anticipation as he was ushered down the hall to his match a short time later, but he kept his mouth shut and his gaze even all the same. “Shoot to kill,” one of the guards said when they paced to a stop in front of the annoyingly familiar door. “That’s an order.”

“Isn’t it always?” Axl pointed out dryly, stepping forward and putting on as much of a defiant mask as he could manage in front of the jeering crowd. For a few moments, he didn’t move, teal-green eyes traveling over the coolant staining the shiny chrome walls and floor, the people in the front row shrieking as usual, though he swore that the atmosphere felt a little different-

And when he saw who his opponent was, his breath caught in his throat and his core dropped.

Hearing Dennis sound so grief-stricken when they had spoken was one thing, but seeing it in person was another thing entirely, the young Reploid’s eyes blank and his expression void of any emotion. He was sitting against the far wall in silence, one leg drawn up to his chest, giving the revolver in his hand an idle twirl every few moments and almost seeming to gaze through Axl as if he wasn’t even there.

Someone in the crowd shouted, “ _Fight already_!” prompting Dennis to slowly get to his feet.

“How long have you been out here?” Axl asked, a chill running down his spine when Dennis simply blinked and shrugged helplessly in response.

“Since this morning. And they haven’t let me out.” The smaller unit swayed slightly, as if he was having trouble staying standing. “Not even six matches later.”

Well no wonder he was having trouble standing, Axl mused to himself silently.

Dennis shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and straightened up, raising his revolver and leveling the barrel at Axl’s chest. “Guess you’re number seven.”

The gunner had to make a visible effort not to flinch, keeping his hands loose at his sides and his weight light on his toes, leaving himself ready to move at an instant’s notice. “Kid,” he said slowly, “don’t get rash on me now. Just . . . calm down and let’s talk this out.”

“There’s no point,” Dennis said softly, beginning to take slow, steady paces in Axl’s direction. “Talking won’t get us anywhere. We can’t _talk_ our way out of anything.”

The gunner shifted as if to step back, paused, and then planted himself firmly in place. “You won’t kill me,” he said, somehow managing not to tremble or back down even as the barrel of a revolver came to rest against his chest. “Besides . . .”

The younger Reploid hesitated, and Axl forced a smile. “You’re out of bullets.”

Dennis blinked, his finger tensing against the trigger for a moment before his features softened, a hint of familiar innocence and confusion in his gaze. “H . . . how did . . . ?” His hand trembled, and he slowly sank to his knees, looking up to fix Axl with a wide-eyed, frightened gaze. “H-how did you know?”

“Six matches,” Axl replied, nodding toward the firearm in Dennis’s hand. “I know a plasma-celled six-shooter when I see one and I don’t see an extra recharge cell on you.” He paused, rubbing the back of his neck with a weak laugh. “And I’m a lucky guesser.”

The younger Reploid showed no trace of amusement, simply lowering his eyes and continuing to tremble. “I-I can’t do this any more, Axl,” he whispered. “I’m a murderer, I m-murdered all six of them, one after the other, a-and Jace too . . .”  
“Dennis . . .” Axl slowly dropped into a crouch, ignoring the crowd’s shocked gasps and furious protests as he laid a hand on the younger unit’s shoulder. “Don’t say that kid, you know it’s-”

“The guards called me a killer!” Dennis raised his voice, his eyes beginning to well with tears. “That’s what I am, isn’t it? I’m a killer! So . . . so I killed them . . . !”

Axl frowned and opened his mouth to speak again, stiffening when the end of a cold metal staff jabbed him in the spine. Damn, he shouldn’t have let his guard down long enough to let them sneak up behind him, _stupid_ stupid tunnel vision. “Your orders are shoot to kill,” a guard’s voice came from behind him.

“I’m a little _busy_ at the moment,” Axl grumbled, hissing in pain when a second jab sent a low-voltage surge through his spine.

“It’s your life or his,” the guard said, not so much as flinching when Axl turned to cast them a seething glare. “Pick one.”

Axl’s expression dropped in an instant, a wave of sick fear washing over him.

“So this is what they meant by forcing your hand,” came a familiar voice in his ear. “This is low even for them.”

“You heard that, huh?” Axl said over the private, silent transmission.

“Been watching the whole time. That was a gutsy move you made.”

“Thanks.”

“It was also really stupid.”

“Thanks. Any ideas on what to do next?”

“Don’t die.”

“Good advice. Really appreciate it.”

Axl got to his feet with a quiet grunt, turning to find himself face to face with the human guard who had been prodding at him. “Why should I kill him?”

“Would you rather be the one to die?”

“Why should _either_ of us have to die?!” Axl cried, raising his voice as his patience began to wear thin. “What’s the _point_?! How does killing a teenager who had such a bright future solve _anything_?!”

“He killed his fellows,” the human pointed out. “And his best friend as well.”

“Because _you_ forced them into a fight!”

“How do you know he wouldn’t have done the very same on his own given time? How do you know he wouldn’t have gone Maverick?!”

“How do you know he _would’ve_?!”

Silence.

“Kill him.”

“No.”

“I said _kill him_!”

“No!”

The human gritted their teeth, letting out a breathy, irritated hiss. “The laws of robotics state that a robot must obey orders given to it by humans.”

“This isn’t about the _laws_!” Axl snapped, taking a threatening step in the guard’s direction. “This isn’t about humans, this isn’t about Reploids! This is about an innocent kid’s _life_!”

The gunner’s last word echoed through the now-silent dome, no one in the crowd so much as daring to speak. “Axl,” Dennis finally whispered, breaking the silence and causing the gunner to turn. “It’s not worth it. Just kill me.”

“Kid . . .” Axl frowned, swallowing back a knot of emotion and shaking his head. “I . . . I won’t do that, you _know_ I can’t . . .”

He hadn’t even realized that he’d left his back wide-open, at least not until a staff slammed into his spine and knocked him to the ground, followed by a powerful surge of electricity from the ring on his wrist. “Axl!” his friend’s voice called over their transmission.

“Fine,” Axl managed after a moment, relieved that it had only been one brief jolt and had only interrupted their comm for a second. _Stupid_ fucking tunnel vision, fuck his short attention span for all it was worth! “I’m fine. Just . . . just winded. I’m fine.”

“Be _careful_ , dammit. We can’t afford to lose you. Especially not now.”

“I _know_ , Skrah.” Axl slowly pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing visibly as the excess electricity made his circuits tingle. He’d hardly managed to take a breath before the tip of the staff touched his neck, and it took everything he had to turn his head and shoot the guard a defiant scowl. “Back off,” he hissed.

Axl shifted his gaze over to Dennis, his expression softening from a glare to a silent plea. “Just . . . just do it,” the younger unit whispered. “Keeping on doesn’t mean much to me without Jace here. Besides . . .” He took a deep, shaky breath, taking hold of Axl’s wrist and lifting his hand to point the gunner’s pistol at his own forehead. “Everyone needs a hero like you more than a dumb kid like me.”

“But . . .” Axl’s hand was shaking, Dennis’s hold on his wrist the only thing keeping his aim steady. Those words _hurt_ , suddenly Dennis was reminding him too much of his younger self and that wasn’t _fair_ . . . ! “K-kid . . .”

“I-it’s okay, Axl.” For the first time, Dennis’s resolve wavered, and he screwed his eyes shut as if bracing himself. “I know . . . you won’t let it hurt for too long.”

For another long few moments, Axl just _stared_ , stared and shook, this time very well aware of the guard’s piercing gaze on both of them, of the staff just inches from his back. “I-I’m sorry,” he whispered at last. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

He swallowed, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

_Crack_!

He heard the soft thump as Dennis’s body hit the ground, but he didn’t look. He _couldn_ ’t look. He’d failed, he’d finally failed and killed someone- his _friend_ , no less, an innocent kid with so much to look forward to in life-

Not a single cheer was heard from the crowd as the dazed gunner was led off of the arena floor.

He didn’t say a word as he was taken back to his cell, only sinking down onto his bed once the door was shut and leaning forward to hold his head in his hands. “You did what you could, you know,” Skrah said after a long silence.

“But it wasn’t enough,” Axl mumbled.

“Axl . . .”

“It wasn’t _enough_!” Axl repeated, jerking his head up to fix his cellmate with a worn, pained gaze. “He’s _dead_ and I couldn’t do a thing to save him! I didn’t . . . I didn’t have time to think of anything . . .”

“Exactly.” To Axl’s surprise, Skrah stood up and crossed the room to sit down next to him, genuine sympathy in his eyes in spite of his still-unwavering expression. “You didn’t have time, Axl. You . . . did what you had to do. And you can’t save everyone.”

“But I _want_ to save everyone,” Axl protested softly. “So far it feels like I haven’t saved _anyone_ since I’ve gotten here.”

There was a painfully long silence, finally broken by Skrah’s quiet murmur of, “You saved me.”

To that, Axl wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t feel as if they’d been friends for that long, but he _trusted_ his cellmate. More than he expected to, considering their rocky start. And the look in Skrah’s eyes, though hard for most people to read, seemed to say that he felt the same way. “Come on, enough sulking,” Skrah said, giving Axl’s shoulder a light shove as he got to his feet. “We’ve still got planning to do.”

“R . . . right,” Axl said. “Right, I hear you. Jeez, you’re really hellbent on keeping me focused, aren’t you . . .”

“Someone has to,” Skrah pointed out.

“Okay,” Axl said, hopping off of his bed and starting to scrape his toe across the floor in a rough sketch of the arena’s layout. “Okay. So . . . all the cell blocks are on the west end . . . mainframe, medical, and the exit on the east end, right?”

Skrah hummed in agreement, standing up as well to examine Axl’s drawing. “Eight cell blocks on the west end. We should start with the ones farthest back, the western wing, I think, and then work our way back toward blocks A through D.”

“Start in the back and work forward,” Axl said with a nod. “The ring itself is dead in the center . . . here.” He paused, scraping out a circle on the floor. “And there’s only one exit from there, on the west side. We’ll be better off splitting up once we’re out; I’ll take north and you take south, yeah?”

“Fair enough,” Skrah said. “We split up, gather everyone together, and meet back up in the main hall east of the ring. Then we just need to get past the mainframe and medical and we’re out. You’re sure you want to do this in broad daylight?”

“Have to,” Axl said. “I want everyone . . . all the people in the audience, I want them to _see_. I want them to get who we actually are, why we’re doing all this. How many of those cells do you think you can unlock?”

“At once?” Skrah shook his head. “I could get them eventually, I’m sure, but my head can only take so much. Besides, what do you think’s going to happen if eight blocks of panicked Reploids are suddenly freed all at once with no direction?”

“Chaos,” Axl murmured. “You’re right. Better to lift a couple keycards from the guards, shouldn’t be too hard. Just knock ‘em out.”

“I know, I know, don’t kill them,” Skrah scoffed. “I won’t.”

“We might not even _need_ to,” Axl said, scratching the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “I’d bet some of the guards will defect to our side once things get going. Not all of them, but maybe some.”

“You’re really that optimistic?”

“I talked to one or two of them,” Axl said with a shrug. “It’s worth hoping for- more keycards means we can get more cells open that much faster.”

Skrah was silent for a few moments, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow as if considering another protest. “Fine,” he said at last. “But I’m not going to rely on them if it comes down to the wire.”

The two Reploids spent the rest of the day quietly discussing their plans, trying to come up with backups for any contingency they could think of. “I think that’s about all we can do,” Axl said some hours later. “And it’s almost midnight.”

“You can’t think of anything else?” Skrah pressed.

“We can’t plan for _everything_ ,” Axl said with a sigh, dragging his foot across the floor to scuff out the rough sketches he’d scraped out. “Even when I was a Hunter there was almost never a mission that went one-hundred percent smooth. You prepare for everything you can and come up with the rest on the fly. And we both need to rest.”

“I . . . I suppose so,” Skrah murmured. “We . . . we’re really going to do this?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, at this point,” Axl said softly, laying down on his side and sighing again. “Go to sleep, okay? You’ll need all the focus you can get.”

“Y . . . yes. Yes, you’re right. Good night, Axl.”

The gunner murmured a half-attentive acknowledgement, rolling over so that his back was turned and closing his eyes. Now that everything was quiet and he was left to his own thoughts, the nervousness finally started to settle over him full-on, making his stomach clench and his core race. Midnight came and went, and then one, then two, and sleep still hadn’t come, the gunner tossing and turning restlessly and desperately trying to quiet his own thoughts.

And no amount of rolling over and shuffling under his thin blanket could shut his head off.

“You awake?” his cellmate piped up softly.

Axl physically winced, seeming to curl in on himself for a moment before he responded. “Yeah, sorry,” he whispered. “I’m probably keeping you up with the whole . . . rolling over every three seconds thing . . .”

“It . . . it’s alright. I don’t think I’d be able to sleep anyway.”

Axl frowned, idly rubbing the corner of his blanket between his fingers and falling silent for a few seconds. “People might die tomorrow, Skrah,” he said. “And . . . and I’m leading them into it.”

“People are gonna die tomorrow whether we do this or not,” Skrah pointed out. “You asked me before if I’d rather see them die here, or die fighting for freedom, and . . .” His voice seemed to waver for a moment. “And you were right.”

“You don’t have to fight tomorrow, you know,” Axl said softly. “I’m not gonna force you.”

“I know that,” Skrah whispered. “Dammit . . .”

He trailed off, and for a few minutes the room settled into silence.

“I’m scared too,” Axl finally murmured. “I’m too scared to even sleep.”

“No,” Skrah said, seeming to make an effort to steady his voice. “I mean . . . I know that. I’m just . . . I’m so sick of this, Axl; I’m sick of being a coward and I’m sick of being in a shitty situation and doing nothing about it. I’m going to fight tomorrow and nothing’s going to stop me.” There was a rustle as he sat up, and Axl rolled over to see his cellmate staring at him through sharp, determined violet eyes. “Besides, someone has to watch your back.”

“You’ve got a lot more faith in me than I do,” Axl said with a halfhearted smile. “I’m not exactly mentally prepared to lead an entire arena full of Reploids on a grand adventure.”

“You’re used to groups though, right? When you were a Hunter?”

“Well, yeah.” Much as Axl knew that they both needed to rest, the idle chatter was gradually starting to settle his nerves, or at least give him something to think about that _wasn’t_ his nerves. “But never . . . never like this. Someone else was always calling the shots.”

Skrah made a quiet noise of acknowledgement, seeming to lapse into thought for a few moments. “I think they’ll trust you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Charisma,” Skrah replied. “And a strange ability to be annoyingly endearing. Didn’t you notice, in the last few matches?”

“Notice something besides the death and fear for my own life?”

“The _crowd_ , Axl,” Skrah said with a roll of his eyes. “They’ve been . . . quieter. Since . . . since you and I fought. I think you’re starting to get through to them.”

“Maybe . . .” Axl settled his head back down, drawing a slow, shaky breath and closing his eyes. “I’m still . . . terrified, though . . .”

“You and me both . . .”

It was subtle, as always, but Axl could hear the note of fear in his cellmate’s normally gruff tone. Maybe it had always been there and he just hadn’t listened closely enough. “No matter what happens tomorrow, Skrah, I won’t leave you here,” Axl said, lifting his head to meet the other Reploid’s gaze. “Cross my heart, I’m not gonna leave you behind.”

“And . . . and I won’t give up or back down,” Skrah replied after a moment’s startled hesitation. “I’ll have your back tomorrow, no matter what. I promise.”

“Good,” Axl said with a smile that held far more confidence than he truly felt. “Then I’ll count on you to keep me in line like the jackass you are. No more games this time. We’re _going_ to put a stop to this.”

“Or die trying,” Skrah finished with a determined nod of agreement.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh it's going DOWN son

“Well? Is it working or not?”

Skrah held up a hand for silence, his other hand pressed to the side of his headset and his gaze fixed on the ground in deep concentration. “Mainframe connection’s secure, almost through to the guards’ comm line . . .”

Axl bit his tongue to stop himself from continuing to pester his friend, instead beginning to pace back and forth and twirl his pistol on his index finger. He wished he had more time; he wished he had more people on his side. He wished he had an _army_ on his side.

But he didn’t have time, and he couldn’t recruit whoever he pleased with guards breathing down his neck every second. All that was left to do was trust that they’d follow him when he needed them to.

“Got it,” Skrah muttered a few minutes later. “I’m into their computer system. Shock bracelet system’s deactivated . . . now to modify today’s bracket before they get a look at it . . .”

Axl stifled a yawn, nodding in silent agreement. Waking up at five in the morning wasn’t something he liked making a habit of, especially after getting less than three hours of sleep the night before, but they _had_ to hack in and change the bracket early, before the morning shift guards rotated in, and that took _time_. “Come on, you got this,” he murmured.

“And . . . done,” Skrah said at last. “Now let’s hope the night guards are already gone.”

“Should be, if you looked at the schedule right,” Axl said. “I’d be up a creek without you right now.” He paused, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I’m not gonna make you fight, you know.”

“We went over this last night, Axl. I said I’d help you and I’m not backing down. I made my own choice to fight, same as you did. Now shut up and quit distracting me.”

“Got it,” Axl said, managing a faint smile. “Do your thing, I’ll shush.”

The room settled into a tense silent for the next ten minutes, and Axl eventually stopped pacing and sat down on his bed, glancing up at the monitor every few seconds in nervous anticipation. “There it is,” Skrah said. “They just saw the modified bracket. One of them’s trying to protest, but I think everyone else is blaming it on the night guards. They’re talking about the tandem fight, but . . . no, I think they’re buying it. We gave the crowd such a good show the first time we fought, they’re hoping this time one of us will bite it for real.”

The screen on the wall of their room blipped to life a few minutes later, and both Reploids breathed a sight of relief when they saw the bracket connecting their names. “Excellent!” Axl said. “That’s one down, thank Asimov.”

“Now everything’s in motion.” Skrah got to his feet, starting into a set of pre-combat stretches to loosen himself up. “There’s no turning back any more.”

“We’re getting out of this one way or another,” Axl agreed, checking the power cell in his gun.

“Hey . . . Axl?”

“Huh?”

“Just . . . thank you. For giving me a second chance, even after everything I did to you.”

“Nah, think nothing of it. I should be thanking you for agreeing to see this through with me.”

A sharp bang on the door announced the arrival of the guard, and Axl hopped to his feet, trying to shake off the last of his nervousness. “Well, let’s get this thing started.”

“Wait,” Skrah hissed, keeping his voice low. “We can’t give anything away. They think we hate each other, remember?”

“Yeah, and?”

“So we have to make it convincing. Stand still for a second.”

“Hey, what are you-”

Before Axl could finish his sentence, Skrah had grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back, slamming him against the wall of the cell and pinning him in place just as the guard slid the door open. “ _Ow_!” Axl cried. “You _jackass_ , that was uncalled for! Let go of me!”

“You’re lucky I don’t rip your shoulder out of its socket,” Skrah said, his tone so rough that Axl almost didn’t believe he was bluffing. “Maybe next time I’ll just take your arm all the way off if you’d prefer.”

“Save it for the arena floor,” the guard told them. “You’re both up today. Get moving.”

Skrah let go, giving Axl one more shove for good measure, and Axl cast him a glare that was only half-feigned, the entire right side of his face aching from the rough treatment. “Asshole,” he muttered, obediently following along as the guards led them both down the hall for what he hoped was the last time.

As Axl and Skrah stepped into the arena, neither Reploid showed a trace of fear. They turned so that they faced one another and took up their combat stances, calm teal eyes meeting steady violet. “Are you ready for this?” Axl asked over their usual silent, private transmission.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“You know what to do.” Axl glanced around, and when no shift in the environment came, he turned back to his friend with a toothy grin and spoke aloud. “Aww, flat ground again today? They really like stacking the odds in your favor. Sure didn’t help last time though.”

“Like hell I’m letting you near the walls this time,” Skrah said. “Now quit talking and fight!”

Axl made the first move, rushing in far closer than he ever would’ve dared in a real fight. He was already prepared for Skrah to swing, his cellmate’s blow striking his raised forearms and sending a rattle through his entire body. “Someone needs to teach you how to pull a punch,” Axl said with a grin, backing away and allowing Skrah to steadily begin pushing him nearer to the wall of the arena.

He suddenly ducked down, a push from the boosters on his ankles carrying him in a low dash under Skrah’s next swing. “And someone needs to teach you how to sit still!” Skrah shot back, the plasma generators on his gauntlets humming with energy as he activated the blades on his elbows.

Axl skidded into a spin, raising his pistol and leveling the barrel between his cellmate’s eyes as Skrah’s blade swung toward his neck, the crowd shrieking and gasping in anticipation-

And they both stopped.

It was a statement to both their resolve and their trust in each other that neither of them flinched, even though Axl knew how his friend felt about loaded guns, and even though he could feel the heat of Skrah’s plasma blade mere inches away from his neck. “Enough is enough!” Axl said, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd’s outraged booing. “We’re done giving up our lives being your playthings! Reploids are people just the same as you and people don’t belong in gladiator arenas!”

“No you don’t,” he heard Skrah mutter. “Like hell you’re getting in here without my say-so. Keep going, Axl, I’ve got the door on lock.”

Axl nodded in thanks, pleased that most of the crowd’s jeering had faded into uneasy murmurs. “I’ve seen so many people die since I got here,” Axl went on. Right, rousing heroic speech. He was getting good at these lately, or so he hoped. “It didn’t matter who they were, young or old or innocent, so many of them lost their lives just for the crime of existing as a synthetic! People with families, and friends, and _feelings_! Feelings that _you_ programmed them with when you built them! On my life, today marks the beginning of the end of all of that, starting here and now!”

“Axl,” Skrah interrupted. “We’ve got a problem.”

“As expected,” Axl said. “What’s up?”

“I’m getting a foreign signal on the sim deck,” Skrah replied. “This shouldn’t happen, there’s no guards in here and the deck’s inactive. Nothing should be giving off a signal except _us_.”

Axl frowned, glancing around the arena for anything, any possible detail he could have missed, his gaze eventually settling on the statue of the vicious-looking, sword-wielding Reploid next to the entryway door. Funny, he still didn’t understand why they’d picked that of all things as their aesthetic. Unless . . .

“The statue,” he mumbled aloud. “They thought it was just a statue . . .”

“What, that statue?” Skrah asked. “The signal’s coming from that direction, but that doesn’t-”

“It’s not a statue, get back!” Axl said, realization hitting him like a punch to the face. “It’s a security drone!”

As he spoke, the drone was whirring into activation, its eyes lighting up bright blue and the sword in its hands beginning to glow with plasma. “We need to move,” Axl said as it started toward them. “ _Now_.”

“You go. I’ll handle things here.”

“You’re shitting me!” Axl backed away, already bracing himself to dodge as the drone began to get its bearings and started toward them. “We don’t know anything about that thing, I’m not leaving you here by yourself!”

Both Reploids sprang in opposite directions as the drone charged at them, its plasma sword hitting the ground with a resounding crash. “And we’re not getting past the guards we both know are waiting for us right outside if we’ve got this thing on our tail!” Skrah pointed out. “You’re faster, you go! I can handle this!”

The drone was already on the attack again, and Axl had to scramble backwards to avoid its swings, able to tell at a glance that its armor was hefty and bullet-resistant. “Axl, _trust me_!” Skrah said, rushing in to slam his knuckles into the back of the drone’s shoulder and draw its attention.

That seemed to strike a chord with the gunner, his eyes narrowing and his grip on his pistol tightening as he turned and made a sprint for the entryway. “You better catch up!” he called back, activating his Stealth Mode as he ran.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can!” Skrah shouted back, already locked in a vicious battle with the sword-wielding drone.

Axl put on a burst of speed with the jets on his ankles as he neared the slowly-opening door, immediately counting no less than five guards waiting for him. “I’m through!” he said over comm, taking out the guard nearest to the door with a leg sweep that they quite literally didn’t see coming.

He spun, taking down the next-nearest guard with a pistol-whip and feeling mingled relief and fear when he heard the entryway door slam shut behind him. “Activate all drones and send out armed reinforcements!” one of the remaining guards yelled into her comm. “We’ve got an escaped unit!”

Great, Axl mused to himself as he floored the remaining guards with a series of quick punches and kicks. Now he’d have to deal with even _more_ giant ugly statues.

No time to worry about it now; all he could do was keep moving before everything got out of hand. He paused long enough to grab the keycards from two of the guards before making a run for it again, making his way past the sparring room and starting to head for the cellblock farthest from the entrance.

He made it all the way to the northwestern corner of the arena before he had to slow down to catch his breath and drop his Stealth Mode, dismayed to see that there was another security drone with an equally large sword at the end of the hall, though this one didn’t appear to be active just yet. “No time,” Axl hissed to himself, swiping his keycard on the cell closest to the end of the hall. “If you want to get out, follow my lead and don’t slow down!” he shouted, leaving it to the Reploids inside to open their own door and follow if they pleased. He moved forward to the next cell, relieved to hear a door sliding open behind him. “No time to hesitate, move!”

Relief turned to dismay when he saw the three armed guards approaching from the opposite end of the hall, two humans and one Reploid by the look of it. “Back off if you don’t want to get hurt!” he warned them, moving on to the third cell. Five more . . . “I don’t want to fight you!”

One of the humans started forward, but to Axl’s complete shock, the other two guards turned in unison and shoved her against the wall with enough force to leave her visibly dazed. “Don’t just stand there!” the Reploid guard called when Axl stared at them as though dumbfounded.

Axl quickly snapped back to his senses, rushing forward with a nod to unlock the fourth and fifth cells while his apparent new allies took care of the final two. “It’s active!” one of the Reploids behind him suddenly shrieked. “That statue thing’s moving!”

The gunner spared a glance behind him for half a second, just long enough to get a quick headcount and confirm that they were in danger. “Follow me and don’t stop!” he said, breaking into a sprint and feeling a twinge of relief when everyone behind him immediately followed suit. “If a guard gets in your way, push past ‘til they’re not in the way anymore; don’t worry about the shock bracelets!”

Not enough space to fight that thing, too much of a disorganized crowd, needed to regroup, had to regroup. Needed a place to shelter until he could come up with something-

“Axl!”

The gunner started at the sound of his name, though he didn’t break stride as the familiarity of the voice quickly registered with him. “Up here, Lys!” he called with a wave of his hand, and a moment later she was sprinting alongside him, easily matching his pace. “Glad you were in the first cellblock I made it to!”

“Likewise,” Lysimachi replied. “I’ve never met someone who enjoys putting on a show like you do. It’s nice to finally be able to stop faking my way through every day of the week.”

“I take it that means you’re on my side,” Axl said with a grin that wasn’t entirely genuine. “We need a place to shelter, anyone have any ideas?!”

“Sparring room!” one of the guards shouted from the edge of the group. “The doors have heavy-duty locks and there’s no drones in there!”

“On it!” Axl said, making a sharp right turn at the next corner and waving the two guards closer to him. “Help me get everyone inside!”

He could hear the drone pounding steadily closer, and his core raced with near-panic as they herded the crowd of Reploids inside and dragged the heavy door shut, one of the guards locking it from the inside with a swipe of their keycard just before the drone’s sword slammed against the door with a heavy _bang_. “Okay,” Axl said, panting quietly as he struggled to catch his breath. “Not exactly how I planned to start, but this could be worse.” It could totally be worse, couldn’t it?

Of course it could be worse. He could’ve already been dead by this point.

He straightened up, exhaling slowly and lifting a hand to his communicator to check on his friend. “Skrah, do you read me? You still alive in there?”

Nothing came across except silence, and Axl swallowed back the wave of fear that rose in his stomach. “I’ve cleared out the northwestern cellblock and got a group in the sparring room, but there’s more drones around,” he went on, every worst case scenario possible running through his head. “Do you copy, Skrah?”

Again, he was met with silence, and even though all he wanted to do was scream in frustration and run back to see what had happened, he couldn’t do either of those things. “I’m trusting you to catch up, buddy,” he muttered. “Don’t you die on me.”

He turned his attention back to the group milling nervously around the room, noting that there were fifteen prisoners not counting himself, and at least five or six guards who had joined up as they ran. “What do we do, Axl?” Lysimachi asked. “We can’t stay in here forever.”

“I know,” Axl said, trying not to let his voice waver. “I know we can’t, this isn’t . . . this wasn’t exactly what I’d planned.” He needed to get this under control, before everyone started panicking . . .

His stomach still in a knot, he crossed the room and stood up on one of the benches, giving a sharp whistle to get the attention of everyone in the room. “Hey! All of you guys, listen up!”

All eyes in the room turned toward him, and he was fairly certain that he would’ve thrown up on the spot if he’d been a human.

For just a moment, his resolve faltered, but when he caught Lysimachi’s eye from across the room, he seemed to gather his wits about him and strengthen his tone. “If we can make it to the main entrance, we’ll be safe!” he said, surprised by how easily his voice carried through the room. “My friend’s going to be bringing help, but we’ve got a lot to get past to get there!”

“What about the others?” someone piped up. “There’s more cellblocks, what about them?”

“I’m not leaving them behind!” Axl assured. “Nobody’s getting left behind today!” He took a deep breath, his stomach clenching at the thought of how much he was about to ask of them. “It’s going to be dangerous and I’m not gonna force any of you one way or the other. Anyone who’s willing to go back in and help is welcome to follow me; anyone who wants to head straight out can go!”

The crowd broke into an uncertain murmur, but a moment later, Lysimachi and two other Reploids stepped forward. “I’m with you, Axl,” she said. “I didn’t put on this facade for so long just to back out. Tell me where you need me to be.”

“Us as well,” one of the two Reploids who had stepped forward with her put in. “My cellmate and I are willing to do whatever you need us to.”

“I’m sure more of the guards will join us once we move forward!” one of the human guards in the group shouted out. “I’ve heard a lot of them complaining lately!”

Axl beckoned her forward, slowly starting to put together a new plan in his head. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Joara, sir!”

The gunner almost flinched at being called ‘sir’, but he quickly brushed it off, reminding himself to stay as focused as possible. “Those drone things,” he said. “The statues. Any information you can give me?”

“They’re most likely roaming the halls in search mode right now,” Joara said. “They lock on to the signal from the shock bracelets, so they’re not likely to attack guards or outsiders.”

“Small advantage,” Axl said with a nod. “Go on, anything else? Weaknesses, design flaws?”

“If they have one weakness, it’s the lack of internal surge protectors,” Joara went on. “External armor is heavy, but we needed a quick way to down them just in case one of them ever went rogue.”

“Surge protectors,” Axl mused, catching Lysimachi’s eye and casting her a nod that brought a near-smirk to her lips. “Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this!” he said, raising his voice and adopting his commanding tone again. “I want three groups! One group’s going to make a break straight for the exit; once you’re out and past the signal scramblers, I need someone to get in touch with Anacua. I’ve got a contact there who’s going to be waiting to send reinforcements. Anyone who wants to head right out, gather on the left side of the room, and I want at least one electrical unit or guard with a shock staff in every group, preferably more!”

A few of the Reploids began to shuffle across the room, and Axl turned his attention toward the remaining group. “We split up,” he ordered. “You three guards, go with the front-end group to back them up against the drones. And . . . you five, and the last guard, you’ll start making a sweep of the northern end of the building. Lysimachi, you go with them as well. Joara, you and everyone else is with me taking the south wing. We’ll send a few back up to do a final sweep once we’re clear, and any Reploids or other guards we gather up can join whichever of the three groups they’re most comfortable in. Do whatever you have to getting past the drones, but get any guards out of your way non-lethally; we’re in this to escape, not murder. Sound good to everyone?”

“Will you be all right in your group, Axl?” Lysimachi asked. “Those drones looked like they have thick armor; I doubt your pistol will be enough.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Axl said, twirling his pistol on his index finger with a smirk that he hoped looked genuinely confident. “I’ve got options. Is everybody clear on the plan?”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd, and Axl hopped down from the bench, waving Lysimachi and her group over toward the door. “Your group will go first, Lys. You’re the best-equipped to blow past the drone that’s knocking right outside. Everyone settle into your groups and get ready to make a run for it!”

He turned away for a moment, trying to calm his racing core and tapping into his comm line with his cellmate one more time. “Hey . . . if you’re not back by the time I make my final sweep, I’m gonna go back to the ring and find you. I promised not to leave you behind and I meant it, you got that?”

Once again, he was met with nothing but silence, and it was only the lack of static that gave him hope that his cellmate was still alive. “All right,” he whispered to himself. “All right, let’s do this. We’re gonna do this . . .”

He moved to stand at the head of his group, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves and raising his voice once more. “Everybody ready?”

Again, he was met with a quiet, uncertain murmur of acknowledgement, and he sighed and tried one more time. “I said, is _everybody ready_?!”

Lysimachi gave a shout of agreement, and the rest of the Reploids in the room followed suit, the sound turning into a chorus of determined if chaotic cries. “Then let’s get out there and take back the freedom we deserve!” Axl shouted.


	23. Chapter 23

The guard in Lysimachi’s group swiped their card to unlock the door, and Lysimachi leapt forward with a terrifying shriek as two more of her group pulled the heavy door open. The drone waiting outside hardly had time to register the movement before Lysimachi was on the attack and flinging one electrically charged chakram into its chest, the sharp blade tearing a gash in the heavy armor. A bolt of electricity surged from the second chakram in her hand, exploding through the drone’s exposed inner mechanisms with an earsplitting static crackle. “Go, go!” Axl yelled. “Everybody move, now!”

He broke into a run as Lysimachi’s group surged forward, his own group close on his heels and the third bringing up the rear. “Head west!” Axl called. “Grab as many keycards as you can and unlock cells as you go!”

The thought of being a unit leader had never even crossed his mind as a Maverick Hunter, if he was being honest with himself. He’d never thought of himself as someone people would follow, or even really as someone to look up to. But right now, as he sprinted for the southwestern wing and shouldered a guard out of his way, grabbing their keycard without breaking stride and tossing it to one of the Reploids behind him, he didn’t have time to lament about _any_ of that. Hell, he didn’t even have time to stop and think about what X or Zero would do. “Drone up ahead!” he called, unlocking the first cell in the hall and arming his Splash Laser. “Stay behind me!”

He fired, a spout of electrically charged water pouring from the barrel of his gun and soaking the drone from head to toe, but to his dismay, it continued to advance on them as though it had just been shot with a harmless super-soaker. “Dammit,” Axl hissed. “Need an opening in its armor after all . . .”

Gathering his wits about him, he switched his pistol back to its standard settings and darted forward, pelting the drone’s side with bullets as he dashed past it. “Get the rest of the cells in this hall and then move north!” he called to his group, pleased to see that they were already beginning to unlock doors and usher their fellow Reploids out into the hall. “I’ll keep this guy busy and catch up later!”

“Axl, are you sure?” Joara called. “I can stay behind with you and help!”

“No, you’re the only one with a shock staff!” Axl shouted, frantically zigzagging backwards and trying to keep the drone’s attention on himself while he unlocked the cell at the far end of the hall. “They need you with them in case we find more of these things!”

“You need an electrical weapon?” a new voice called, and Axl turned enough to see a Reploid with a short black braid and a scimitar in his hand stepping out of the cell he’d just unlocked. “I can take a shot at it!”

He snapped his wrist, static beginning to crackle around the blade of his weapon. “All of you, split up!” Axl called, a new idea starting to form in his head. “Joara, take half of them north until you can’t go any farther, you’ll run through two more blocks before you have to stop! Then hang a right and head east for the exit! New guy, you take the other half directly east from here and get everyone in the two blocks you’ll pass through on the way out!”

“Name’s Gino,” the Reploid with the scimitar said. “What about you?”

“I’ll stay here and hold this guy off,” Axl said, hissing in frustration when his shoulders hit the wall as he continued to back away from the advancing drone. “I’ll catch up.”

“You sure?”

“For the last time, _yes_ , I’m sure!” Axl said, sounding more snappish than he intended as he ducked under a heavy sword swing and shoved the other Reploid forward. “Just _go_ , all of you! Someone needs to bring up the rear and do a final sweep anyway, so quit stalling and move!”

To his relief, Joara only held his gaze for a few moments longer before turning and leading the group down the hall directly north, leaving Axl alone with the security drone. All he needed was an opening in this thing’s armor and he’d be in the clear, but _damn_ this hallway was way too narrow for comfort.

He spun the pistol on his index finger, calling up the protocols for his Spiral Magnum and firing three solid lead bullets at the drone’s chest, feeling a shiver of satisfaction as he always did at the sound of the empty cartridges hitting the ground near his feet. The weapon had been designed to pierce, and Axl was pleased to find that even this drone’s armor wasn’t hefty enough to stop it, but he did give a hiss of frustration when it hardly flinched before rushing at him once again with its sword raised. “Come _on_ , where the fuck is your core, you son of a bitch!” Axl snapped, trying to dash past his opponent to safety and giving a pained yell when the drone’s sword slashed down across the back of his left shoulder.

Thrown off-balance by the blow, his sprint turned into a clumsy stagger, and as he turned on his heel to fire in retaliation, he was immediately met with a heavy fist slamming into his chest hard enough to crack the gem on his armor. He landed on his back with a thud, frantically trying to scoot backwards and re-arm his Splash Laser even though he was almost too dazed to know which way was up or how close the drone was getting. Dazed or not though, he was sure that it was raising its sword, and he was almost positive he wasn’t going to be fast enough to-

Something grey moved in front of him in a blur, and a moment later he heard the sharp, distinct hiss of plasma striking plasma. “Axl, get off your ass!” a rough, familiar voice told him. “I can’t hold this thing off forever!”

Shaking off the last of his daze, Axl sprang to his feet as his optics came back into focus, dashing past the drone and his cellmate and firing several more bullets from his Spiral Magnum as he moved. “Dammit, why can’t I find your damn _core_!” he snapped when the drone’s attention didn’t waver.

Instead, the drone lifted its sword, ignoring Axl entirely and swinging the blade down in an arc toward Skrah’s waist. Skrah brought both arms down to block, but the force still hit him hard enough to send him sprawling across the narrow hall, his left shoulder crashing into the wall with an audible crunch. “Got you!” Axl cried, finally finding his opportunity to rush in close and press the barrel of his gun against the drone’s back as he shifted the weapon’s form once more.

Electricity exploded out of the barrel, arcing through the drone’s body and sputtering in and out of the bullet holes that riddled its torso. The drone froze in mid-movement with a shudder, the blue glow of its eyes fading and its body going rigid as it fell to the ground with a crash. “Nice timing, Skrah!” Axl said, rushing over to his friend’s side and holding out a hand to help steady him as he struggled to his feet. “You okay?”

“More or less,” Skrah panted. He looked like he’d seen far better days, his armor dented and cracked, his stomach bleeding from a shallow gash, and his left arm dangling uselessly from the crumpled mess that used to be his shoulder, but Axl was relieved to see his eyes still gleaming with intensity. “Sorry I dropped the comm. I started losing focus, had to pick some signals to lose and that was one of them.”

“Hey, I’m just glad you’re alive,” Axl said. “I owe you one.”

“That’s an understatement,” his cellmate grunted in response. “I’d rather _not_ fight one of those on my own again if I can help it.”

“Same,” Axl agreed with a halfhearted laugh. “Come on, let’s get moving. I sent two groups up to take the northern wing so we should be clear to head straight east and out and grab any stragglers on the way.” He turned and started off at an easy jog, his scanners alert for any approaching signals. “How’d you do it?”

“I stabbed it until it stopped moving,” Skrah replied bluntly, hissing in pain and lifting a hand to his bad shoulder. “I’m assuming I eventually found its core, and once it finally quit I came to find you. Dammit, must’ve jarred my shoulder out of its socket when I hit the wall . . .”

“Yeah, I know how much that hurts.”

Skrah flashed Axl a worn glare, and Axl reached over to give him a light, friendly shove without breaking pace. “I’ll rib you about it later,” he said. “More important right now that we get the hell out and find you a medic.”

His cellmate simply grunted in agreement, and Axl was visibly impressed by his stubborn perseverance. “Got another signal coming toward us,” Skrah said. “Looks like another one of the big guys.”

“Damn, must’ve come down the north hall,” Axl muttered. “All right, let’s handle this one nice and clean. Can you get in close and distract it?”

“I can get in close and _fight it_ , what the hell do you mean ‘distract it’?”

“You’ve only got one arm,” Axl pointed out. “And I’d prefer if you didn’t get your head cleaved in half.” As he spoke, the drone rounded the corner, its bright blue eyes immediately locking onto them both as it picked up the signal from their shock bracelets. “Besides, I can’t let you have all the fun!”

“We’ve got two in this hall!” someone called. “Jesse, back me up!”

Axl looked over his shoulder to see two armored human guards rounding the corner at the opposite end of the hall, and before he could think fast enough to decide on an order, Skrah decided for him and darted toward the newcomers. “I’ll hold these two off for you!” he said. “Get the drone!”

With no time to hesitate over his friend’s safety- or recklessness, for that matter- Axl turned his attention toward his target, once again arming his Spiral Magnum and taking a quick glance around to check for anyone who could sneak into the crossfire. “Excellent,” he muttered to himself, ducking down as he darted past and lifting his arm to fire, the lead bullets piercing several holes in the drone’s armor. “No holding back this time.”

He did one more proximity sweep as he backed away and brought up the protocols for his Splash Laser, relieved that his cellmate was far enough away that he wouldn’t be in danger. “Have a taste of some of this!” he cried, feeling a thrill of exhilaration as he pulled the trigger. The electrified water poured into the bullet holes in the drone’s armor, sending powerful shocks through its inner mechanisms that rendered it inactive in seconds.

As soon as the drone’s eye sockets went dark, Axl sprinted for the other end of the hall, his eyes darkening when he saw his friend struggling to defend himself against both humans’ shock staffs. Skrah was fast and precise, but even he could only block so well with only one arm when he was being double-teamed, much less find an opening to strike back. “Terese, the other one’s heading back toward us!” one of the humans called out. “Put this one down so we can deal with him!”

Terese lifted her staff and brought it down in an overhead swing, and Skrah raised his good arm above his head to block, reflexively trying to move the other arm to cover his midsection and cringing in pain when the dislocated joint refused to obey. Jesse took the chance and lunged forward, jamming the electrified end of his staff into Skrah’s already-bleeding stomach and earning a yell of pain from the Reploid.

“Leave him alone, you son of a _bitch_!” Axl shouted, putting on a burst of speed and turning his body sideways to slam his shoulder into Jesse’s arm and knock the shock staff from his hands. Terese reacted with more speed that Axl expected from most humans, spinning her staff around and thrusting the business end down at Axl’s wrist.

Axl yelped in pain surprise as electricity shot through his hand and forearm and up his shoulder and chest, and though it lasted only a moment before he jerked away, it was enough to force his hand open and send his pistol clattering to the ground. Terese was on top of him at once, and under normal circumstances Axl would’ve been impressed by her skill and courage.

Right now though, he was mostly pissed off that she and her partner had hurt his friend.

And Terese was about to find out why the gentlest, smiliest people were the _worst_ ones you could choose to piss off.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> holy shit i can't believe we made it this far

Memories of sparring with his father-figure flooded through the gunner as Terese came at him swinging, all the times Red had snuck up on him when he was unarmed or unprepared, all of the hard-fought matches with a scythe swinging at his head and only his own bare hands to protect him, not to mention every time thereafter that Zero had landed him on his ass. “Go back in your cell where you belong, Reploid!” Terese yelled.

“Act like a decent person and leave us the hell alone!” Axl shot back, and he would’ve made a move to twist Terese’s staff from her hands had Jesse not suddenly sprang into the fight next to her and forced him to keep his guard up and back away.

Focus, he told himself, all of his attention on blocking their swings until he could find and opening. Just stay focused, Zero would kill him from beyond the grave if he couldn’t handle two humans on his own. “I thought you only fought at range!” Jesse cried, his jerky, uncertain swings indicating that he was much less experienced than his partner. “Who taught you to fight like this?!”

“Everyone,” Axl replied, tightening his movements as he prepared to counterattack. “And they’d have my ass if I lost to you.”

He dodged sideways and turned, once again thrusting his shoulder into Jesse’s chest hard enough to send him sprawling into the wall and snatching the staff from his hands as he fell, immediately bringing it up to block as Terese swung downward at his head and twisting it sideways to throw off her balance. She started to catch herself and turn, only to drop her staff with a gasp when Skrah caught her from behind and jammed his fingers into the back of her tricep. The gladiator followed up with a swift kick to the back of her knee, and she dropped to the ground, whimpering in pain and clutching her leg. “You’re both dangerous machines, Mavericks fighting a human!” she gasped. “The laws of robotics-”

“Please,” Axl scoffed. “The laws of robotics aren’t worth shit and don’t start with me on the definition of a Mav. Besides, if we really wanted to kill you, you both would’ve been dead in half a second.” He strode across the hall to scoop up his pistol, checking it for damage and casting Jesse a glare. “Don’t even try it,” he warned when the human shifted as if to sit up. “You good, Skrah?”

“Been better,” Skrah said, though the continued fights were clearly beginning to take their toll. “Quit fussing. I’ll keep going as long as you need me to.”

“Regardless, we need to get out of here sooner rather than later,” Axl said. “You sure you’re okay?”

“My shoulder’s popped out of its socket, my head’s killing me, my stomach’s bleeding, and everything hurts like hell from being shocked,” Skrah replied flatly. “I’m fine.”

“Grumpy,” Axl said with a nod. “You’re fine.”

“Axl!” someone called from a ways down the hall, causing both Reploids to stiffen until Axl recognized the voice a moment later. “You’re still in one piece!”

Axl breathed a soft sigh of relief, raising a hand to wave over the human approaching them with two officers and a medic close behind. “You made it, Xan! Skrah, relax, they’re on our side,” he assured, giving his friend a light nudge.

“We’ll start on ahead and look for any injured,” one of the officers behind Xan said, heading off down the hall with the other officer and the medic following along. “I’ll report back once we’ve done a full loop!”

“Roger that, thanks,” Xan said, turning back to Axl and leaning their weight sideways against the metal polearm in their hands. “There’s two more groups of medics scouring for injured and stragglers,” they said. “And a few medics and officers on guard outside.”

“How many Reploids are out there?” Axl pressed. “Did they make it?”

“A lot,” Xan replied. “It looks like most of them made it out, but not everyone’s in good shape. And they’re all nervous. They could really use you out there, Axl.”

“Sounds like you’re a leader whether you want to be or not,” Skrah grunted, wincing and clasping a hand to his stomach. “Can we go?”

“Right, let’s get moving,” Axl agreed. “I’m assuming the main hall was clear?”

“Last I checked, but it might not be any more,” Xan replied, giving Skrah a quick glance up and down. “You good to keep going?”

“Yes, but the next person who asks me that is getting a broken nose,” Skrah snapped. “You included, Axl.”

The gunner simply waved a hand in reply, starting off and making a sharp left at the end of the hall, followed by another quick right a short ways later. “Just down this hall, and then we’re out,” he said. “It’s almost over . . .”

“Not even close,” Skrah pointed out. “Just getting them out isn’t going to change everyone’s minds in a snap. At least part of the crowd seemed to be cheering for me while I was fighting solo, but . . .”

“Let me have my moment of shameless optimism, damn you,” Axl said, trying to keep his tone light and teasing. “Whoa whoa, hold up!”

A single human guard, looking terrified out of his wits, and another security drone at his side were blocking their way down the main hall. Axl immediately raised his Spiral Magnum and fired at the drone several times, grumbling in discontent when he found that he _still_ couldn’t seem to hit its core. “Step aside!” he demanded, instinctively shifting so that Xan was behind him.

“ _Shit_ ,” Xan hissed. “I _knew_ those things looked familiar, not again dammit . . .”

“It won’t happen again,” Axl said, turning his head to see Xan shaking like a leaf, but holding their ground regardless. “You’ve got us protecting you this time. Stay behind us, got it?” He looked back at the guard and the drone, scowling when he found that neither of them had moved. “I said step aside!”

“N-no!” the human stuttered out, and Axl guessed by the keycard in his hand and the fact that the drone hadn’t moved yet that he had some measure of remote control over its actions. “I’m . . . I’m the last person left and I can’t let you get out!”

“I’ll handle this, Axl,” Skrah said as he took a step forward. “I know you won’t risk electrocuting a human anyway. You and Xan make a run for it.”

“ _Hell_ no!” Axl shot back. “I’m not leaving you behind, especially not when you’re injured!”

“Then I’ll catch up later, just like last time!” Skrah snapped. “They need you out there, _go_!”

“And _I_ need _you_ , don’t be a reckless dumbass!”

“Both of you quit bitching at each other and make a decision already!” Xan cut in.

Axl and Skrah shared a momentary glance before they both sprang forward in unison, Skrah raising his good arm to block as the human swung at him and Axl arming his Gaea Shield as he got in close. The gunner raised his weapon to protect his head and Skrah’s from the drone’s sword, feeling the impact rattle through his wrists and upper body as the blade came crashing down. “ _Ow_ ,” he said, his shoulder already in enough pain from the first drone he’d fought. “Just . . . just get some distance so I can down this thing without shocking you both to death,” he grunted, feeling his legs shaking with the effort of holding the drone’s weight back.

“That much I can do,” Skrah said. “Don’t get cut in half.” He lunged forward, alternately blocking and searching for an opening, and Axl turned his full attention to the sword-wielding drone.

He threw his weight sideways to get the sword off of his shoulders, taking two steps back and blocking another swing from the front with his shield. “Come on,” he hissed to himself, deactivating his Gaea Shield to lighten his movements and allow him to dodge rather than block, his servos aching from the heavy impact. “Just . . . need a small opening . . .”

The human stayed stubbornly close to the drone’s side in spite of Skrah’s attempts to push him back, and though Axl didn’t think his friend was in danger of losing the fight, the damage to his systems was clearly beginning to take a toll on his speed and coordination. Out of the corner of his eye, he was surprised to see a blur of movement as Xan joined the fight, the overhead lights gleaming off of their staff as they moved to protect Skrah’s weaker side. “There we go,” Axl muttered, drawing the drone’s attention over to himself and setting his pistol to his shorter-range electrical weapon seeing as how the hallway was too cramped to risk using his Splash Laser.

Little by little, Skrah and Xan began to push the guard away, and Axl backed up several paces, tightening his hold on his gun and bracing the servos in his legs to spring. Just one shot, all he needed was to get in close enough for one good shot-

His proximity sensors registered the person rushing up behind him just a few seconds too late to do anything about it, something hard and metallic slamming into the back of his right knee just before he could spring toward the drone. As he started to shift his weight to his other leg and regroup, the sharp end of a shock staff jammed into his spine just below his torso armor, sending electricity surging through his body from head to toe and tearing a shriek of pain from his throat.

Axl swore that time seemed to slow down for the next several moments- the drone raising its sword and starting toward him, a shout of his name from somewhere nearby, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Skrah rushing toward him with his good arm outstretched. He tried to find a way to call out, to tell him to _stop_ because he wouldn’t be able to defend himself with only one arm-

And then his friend was shoving him out of the way hard enough to send him sprawling as the drone brought its sword down in a vicious slash, and as Skrah fell Axl saw Xan sprinting over to swing his staff at Jesse, who had been the one to sneak up behind him in the first place. Acting more on instinct than rational thought, Axl caught his weight on his good leg and pushed off in the drone’s direction, pressing the barrel of his gun against its midsection and pulling the trigger before it could raise its coolant-stained sword for another swing.

He half-stumbled backwards as the drone fell, losing his balance and landing on his rear with a thunk. “Shit,” he panted, his circuits burning with excess electricity, his damaged shoulder feeling like it was on fire, and his knee throbbing from the impact of Jesse’s swing. “Holy shit . . .”

For a few seconds, all he could manage to do was catch his breath and survey the scene, taking in the now-inactive drone, the dazed human in the corner, Xan standing over Jesse and looking terrified out of their wits but somehow unharmed, and _Jesse_ , Axl had never expected him to be the one to jump back into the fight after how frightened he’d looked. His gaze finally settled on his friend, lying unmoving on his side where Axl had stood mere moments ago-

“ _Skrah_!”

Axl scrambled clumsily to his feet, limping across the room as fast as his good leg would carry him and dropping to his knees in a clumsy skid at Skrah’s side. “Xan, he needs a medic!” he cried when he saw the gash running from Skrah’s left shoulder down across his chest, ending just below the right side of his ribs. “His core’s hit and I can’t carry him, my leg’s hurt!”

“Axl,” Xan started to protest, while at the same time Jesse gave a soft whisper of, “Oh, god . . .”

“Go, _please_!” Axl insisted, even though part of him already feared that Skrah was beyond the help of any field medic.

Xan hesitated a moment longer before nodding and sprinting down the hall toward the exit, leaving Axl alone with his injured companion. “Stay with me, buddy,” Axl said, trying to keep his voice steady as he slid his arms under Skrah’s torso, lifting him up and allowing his friend’s head to rest against his chest. “Just hold on, Xan’s . . . Xan’s gonna bring help so stay with me, okay?”

Skrah groaned in pain, blinking up at Axl through hazy violet eyes for a few moments before closing them in a wince. “Core’s . . . core’s damaged,” he managed, his voice hoarse and strained. “Bad . . . not . . . gonna hold out . . .”

“You’re _going_ to hold out!” Axl said. “You’re getting out of this with me, dammit, I’m not losing you!”

There was a brief silence, and when Skrah opened his eyes again his gaze had softened in spite of the harsh, painful-sounding rasp every time he took a breath. “We made it, right?” he asked. “It’s . . . it’s over . . .”

“Y . . . yeah.” Axl nodded, swallowing back a knot of emotion and gently brushing his friend’s shaggy black bangs off of his forehead. “It’s really over. We’re free. _You’re_ free.”

“Free, huh . . .” For just a moment, Axl swore that he saw Skrah’s lips twitch up in a hint of a smile. “Never thought . . . I’d hear those words . . . and have it be a reality again . . .”

“You . . . you knew though,” Axl murmured. “You knew you were going to take a sword to the chest for me. I mean . . . didn’t you . . . weren’t you scared?”

“Of course I was, dumbass,” Skrah replied, fixing Axl with a surprisingly steady gaze. “But I can’t . . . lead everyone out there and change everyone’s minds. They need you, Axl.”

“And _I_ need _you_ ,” Axl said. “I wouldn’t have gotten through any of this without you. You’re . . . you’re really brave and heroic, you know . . . ?”

“Brave and heroic. . .” Skrah drew a shaky sigh, that faint trace of a near-smile tugging at his features again even as his violet eyes began to fuzz over with hazy grey static. “You know . . . if . . . if I have to go out, I don’t . . . think I’d want it to be any way other than . . . protecting someone like you.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Axl protested softly, feeling as though someone was tearing his core from his chest as he watched his friend’s eyes drift shut. “Please, Skrah . . . please hold on, you can’t . . . I can’t lose you . . .”


	25. Chapter 25

Two weeks.

It felt like just yesterday, but it had already been two weeks.

Axl closed his eyes, tucking his helmet under his arm and tipping his head back to enjoy the light breeze ruffling through his loose ponytail. “Dear rookie me,” he murmured to himself, letting his shoulders slump with tiredness. “Being a hero isn’t what you think it’s cracked up to be. Quit it.”

“Axl? How are you holding up?”

The rough voice made him jump, and he quickly straightened up and pretended like he hadn’t been thinking about trying to fall asleep on his feet. “You should be resting,” he said instead of answering the question.

“I’m not going to fall over.”

“Your core nearly got split in half.”

“What’s your point?”

Axl rolled his eyes, shaking his head as his friend moved to stand at his side.  “I’ve spent the last two weeks resting, what more do you want from me?”

“You really were built to be a stubborn pain in the ass, Skrah,” Axl said with a soft laugh. “What do I even do with someone like you . . .”

“Of course I’m a stubborn pain in the ass,” Skrah snorted, though Axl sensed a hint of good humor in his tone. “Why else do you think I’m still around?”

Axl simply shook his head again, his expression softening as he thought back to the day of their escape. He’d been on the verge of breaking down entirely when Skrah had closed his eyes, even moreso when Xan and the field medic had returned and almost immediately determined that it was already too late.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, sir,” the medic had said, and Xan had frowned and placed a hand on Axl’s shoulder in a vain effort to comfort him. “His core’s on the verge of shutting down, and I’m afraid he wouldn’t last the trip to Anacua. His systems would cut out long before we got him there.”

“There has to be something!” Axl had cried. “There’s gotta be _something_ we can try, _please_ . . . !”

And that was when he’d heard the voice calling his name.

It was soft at first, so soft that he almost thought he’d imagined it, and it was only when he saw the faint blue glow of light in the corner of his vision that he felt his heart twist in his chest even harder. “X . . . !”

To his shock, a second ball of light began to form alongside the first, this one a shade of red that was so familiar it made Axl want to cry. “Z-Zero! But I thought . . . X said you couldn’t . . .”

“You know me when I want something bad enough, kiddo,” the little red cyber-elf said with a smirk, while X flitted over to settle on Skrah’s chest.

“X . . . X and Zero,” Xan murmured, while the field medic alongside them seemed unable to do anything except sit and gawk at the sight. “That’s . . . this is . . .”

Both cyber-elves turned to look at them, and Axl managed a momentary hint of a smile when all Xan could come up with was, “I always pictured you both being taller.”

Zero snorted in amusement, and Axl rolled his eyes, his smile fading as quickly as it had come as he looked down at his mentors. “What are you guys _doing_ here?” he asked softly.

“Helping you, what’s it look like?” Zero replied. “We couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, you know us.”

“We were watching the whole time,” X murmured, his features creased with concentration as he placed his tiny hands over Skrah’s coolant-stained chest. “This is the least we can do to lend a hand. Dammit . . .”

“W-what is it?” Axl dared to ask.

“I don’t have enough left in me,” X sighed, though he clearly wasn’t intent on giving up all the same. “I used up so much energy helping Zero during the Neo Arcadian uprisings . . .”

“My turn then,” Zero said, his translucent wings fluttering to carry him over to X’s side. “I’m no healer, but like hell I’m letting you fade away to nothing using up all you’ve got.”

“You guys haven’t changed a bit,” Axl whispered, watching as Zero placed his hands on the back of X’s shoulders, the light around both of them brightening as he poured his own energy into his fellow cyber-elf. “Can . . . can you really save him? I mean . . . do you know how?”

“Not in the slightest,” X replied, his hands beginning to pulse with a soft yellow glow. “Even trained unit leaders wing it sometimes.”

Axl let his shoulders slump with a soft sigh, all of the damage he’d been ignoring thus far finally beginning to bear down on him. “Winging it feels like all I did all day,” he mumbled. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, you guys . . .”

“You’re doing exactly what you were trained to do,” Zero said, looking up to fix Axl with a gaze that was somehow stern and proud all at once. “You’re protecting people.”

“I think . . . that’s the best I can do,” X said before Axl could respond, Zero catching the blue cyber-elf as he slumped forward with exhaustion. He turned his head toward Xan and the field medic, both of whom were staring as if they’d just seen a ghost. “He’ll still need to be hospitalized, but I repaired the worst of the damage to his core. And thank you, for being there to support Axl when he needed you.”

“We . . . yes, that . . . of course,” Xan managed to stutter out. “I don’t have a clue in hell what just happened, but whatever you did, thank you.”

“So . . . so he’ll make it?” Axl whispered hoarsely. “He’ll be okay?”

X smiled up at him in that way only X could smile, that soft, fatherly expression that Axl swore could make you think everything was going to be fine even if someone was slowly cutting you in half wire by wire. And Zero was smirking, that infectiously cocky smirk of his, and Axl found himself quickly reaching up to wipe the back of his wrist over his eyes. “You made us real proud today, kiddo,” Zero said, giving the gunner a thumbs-up with his free hand. “I wish we could stay and watch you kick ass in person a while longer.

“Don’t stop, okay Axl?” X murmured. “We’ll keep watching over you and your friend, no matter what happens. Now go, get out there. They’re waiting for you.”

“I . . . I will,” Axl said, his voice cracking with emotion for a moment before he swallowed and strengthened his tone. “I will, I . . . I won’t stop protecting them, no matter what happens! I promise I won’t!”

A sharp nudge to his shoulder snapped the gunner out of his memory, and he blinked, turning his head to see Skrah watching him with an almost imperceptible hint of worry in his dark eyes. “Sorry,” Axl said with a weak smile. “I’m just tired.”

“How much rest have you gotten since then?”

“What rest?” Axl said with a bitter-sounding laugh.  “Between making sure everyone feels safe and traveling back and forth between here and Anacua, diplomacy, checking up on injured, when have I had time to rest?”

The former gladiator raised an eyebrow, but some part of him seemed to sense that Axl was in too stubborn a mood to really listen to a lengthy lecture at this point. “Feels a bit ironic,” he said instead. “That we ended up in Donnelsbury, of all places.”

“Guess it’s better than nothing,” Axl said with a shrug. “The city’s not in great shape, but you know as well as I do that things still aren’t perfect in Anacua. I think it’s better if everyone has somewhere quiet to recuperate.”

“Suppose so.”

There was a long silence, broken only when Axl drew a shaky, tired-sounding sigh. “I don’t know what to do next,” he admitted softly, relieved that he still had someone around that he was comfortable voicing his fears to. “This . . . this is just the start of it.  There are still so many arenas out there, and I’m trying to organize it all in my head but . . .” He closed his eyes, lifting a hand to rub his forehead. “God, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Your best,” Skrah replied, turning his gaze toward the Reploids milling about outside of the next door warehouse. “It’s all you _can_ do, Axl. And it’s all anyone expects of you.”

Axl made a noise that didn’t quite convey complete agreement, following Skrah’s gaze and falling silent. It both fascinated and surprised him, in a way, how quickly they had organized themselves, the older and more experienced units in the group of escapees seeming to take it upon themselves to protect those who were younger or still wrapped in fear.

Not that all of them didn’t still carry a healthy dose of paranoia.

“They trust you, you know,” the former gladiator added when Axl didn’t speak. “And so do I.”

“It’s going to be dangerous as all hell,” Axl murmured, his brow furrowed with thought.

“Obviously.”

Silence.

“You don’t really plan on trying to do this alone, do you?”

“It’s not as if I have much of a choice,” Axl said, at last turning his head toward his friend. “I can’t very well justify asking anybody to join me in risking their lives standing up to humans and breaking people out of gladiator arenas. The last escape wasn’t exactly pretty.” Or organized, or well-planned, or anything but a chaotic barely-successful mess, in his mind.

He paused, narrowing his eyes slightly at the completely deadpan stare that Skrah fixed him with. “And don’t give me that look,” he added. “I’m not asking you, either.” As much as he wanted to, as much as part of him knew that he _needed_ to, he couldn’t bring himself to. Not after his friend had come so close to losing his life.

“You didn’t,” was the blunt reply that made Axl want to smack him and hug him all at once. “I’m telling you that I’m staying with you.”

Axl rolled his eyes and turned away with a resigned sigh, shaking his head and looking down over the edge of the roof again. “They’re waiting, aren’t they,” he said. “They’re all waiting for someone to organize them and tell them what to do next.” His lips twitched in a frown. “They’re waiting for me.”

“Axl . . .”

Without answering, the gunner straightened up and vaulted himself over the edge of the building, pressing his heels into the wall to slow his descent with the ease of long years of practice. He heard a clank somewhere nearby, and he sighed in resignation when he saw his friend making his way down the fire escape. “You plan on sticking around, you're gonna have to learn how to scale walls,” Axl pointed out.

“I’m sure I’ll learn fast.”

“Stubborn-ass gladiator,” Axl muttered under his breath.

“I heard that.”

Axl simply rolled his eyes again and motioned for Skrah to follow after him as he made his way toward the warehouse, one of the Reploids guarding the entrance straightening at the approach. “Relax,” Axl said. “You're a door guard, not a soldier. Gather everybody up and have them meet me inside, okay? I need to talk to everyone for a bit.”

“Right on it, sir!”

The gunner almost physically winced at being called 'sir', though he was quick to shake it off as he made his way inside with Skrah close behind him, silent and stonefaced as ever. Xan met up with them on the way inside, quickly falling in step alongside the two Reploids. “Was wondering when you were going to come down from there,” they said. “I just finished going around; everyone’s injuries are healing up nicely. Though I’d like to take another look at your core and shoulder later today,” they added with a nod in Skrah’s direction.

“My core and shoulder are _fine_ ,” Skrah said, and though he sounded huffy about it, there was no real malice in his gruff tone. “Just like they were fine yesterday and the day before that.”

“And I’m still going to check them over and make sure they’re continuing to be fine. You almost _died_.”

“Thanks for reminding me. Axl, did you _really_ have to pick the world’s fussiest human as your medic?”

“All this coming from the world’s most stubborn security officer,” Xan shot back, their lips twitching in a smile.

“Good to know you two are bonding nicely,” Axl said with an amused shake of his head. “Just let them check you so I won’t have to listen to them complaining later.”

“Fine, but it won’t change the fact that my core and shoulder are just as well as they were for the past four days.”

Most of the Reploids inside were either sitting on the floor or dozing, though a few seemed too restless to do more than pace or mill about. Several of them looked up at the sound of footsteps, and Axl was admittedly relieved to see a number of the group brighten at the sight of him. At least they seemed to trust him . . .

“Ev . . .” Axl felt his voice start to waver, and it took him a moment to calm down and steady himself. Man, he felt like he’d _never_ get used to making speeches for crowds. “Everyone, gather over and listen up. There's some stuff we all have to discuss.”

“You're fine, Axl,” Skrah murmured, so quietly that only the gunner would hear. “Just breathe and relax.”

Axl nodded almost imperceptibly, waiting a few moments for everyone to crowd around, as well as for the Reploids outside to filter in and join the group. “I'm . . . I'm pleased to say that everything's going well so far,” Axl started, trying to make his mouth and his processor work at relatively the same speed. “You've all done . . . I'm really impressed by how everyone's banded together. And how you've taken it upon yourselves to organize, for the strong to guard the weak, and for everyone to take their turn keeping watch over everyone else.”

He took a deep breath, all the gazes fixated on him mostly serving to make him want to go duck and hide somewhere for a while instead of facing all this. He'd never been trained for this, taught for this. He didn't know how to lead. Suddenly a big part of him was _terrified_ to lead.

But everyone was counting on him. 

“The question remains,” he went on after a moment to gather his thoughts, “as to what happens next. And . . . and the honest answer is, at this point, I don't know. The prejudice and danger isn't over just because one city has had their minds changed, and one group of Reploids has been liberated. Nothing is even close to over.”

Another pause, and his expression hardened just slightly, a cold weight settling in the pit of his stomach. “What all of you do from here on is your choice, and no one else’s. This city, as well as the nearby city of Anacua, is safe for us.” As safe as it could get, at least. “Regardless, I'm . . . I'm proud of all of you for the courage you've shown, during the escape and even now. Thank you, all of you.”

“But sir,” one Reploid piped up softly. “I-I didn't even fight, I was so scared I just ran with the group straight for the exit . . .”

A smile graced Axl's lips at that, something in him seeming to soften slightly. “You were still brave to follow us, and to stay with us,” he pointed out gently. “Courage isn't just about fighting.”

“What are you going to do next, sir?” someone else asked.

“I . . .” Axl took in a slow breath to calm himself, Skrah's and Xan’s presence near his side more comforting than he was willing to admit out loud. “I have no choice, I'm afraid, but to keep fighting until peace is established between humans and Reploids. Until all of our brothers and sisters are free, or until the last scrap of energy leaves my core. Whichever comes first.”

“By yourself?” another voice called.

“I wouldn't force any of you into this,” Axl said, his voice quieting a note. “As I said before, what you do from here on is your choice, not mine.”

There was a long silence, and for a few seconds Axl feared that he had lost their attention.

“I’m with you, Axl.” The voice was familiar enough to make Axl almost feel weak with relief, and a moment later Lysimachi pushed her way to the front of the crowd, Joara following close at her side and making Axl wonder if the two had begun to form a bond in the two weeks they’d been together. Joara was one of numerous guards who were still with their group, and one of a few humans who had stuck with them all the way to Donnelsbury. “You led us to safety once and I believe that you’ll do so again. You have my support.”

“Mine as well,” Joara put in. “I came this far, I’m not going to let it all go to waste by backing down.”

“I'm not the type to to sit on my ass and do nothing,” someone suddenly spoke up, and Axl recognized Gino, who had been ready to throw himself into the fight the moment he’d stepped out of his cell. “Wherever you go, Axl, I plan to follow.”

“There's probably materials around the city,” someone else put in. “Beds and clothes and scrap metal we could use.”

“A couple of us might be able to get jobs in Anacua too,” a third voice added. “Or medical training or something.”

To Axl's amazement, that had seemed to spark the entire room into a chatter, some of the group backing away as if unwilling to risk themselves, but many beginning to look brighter and more eager as ideas were thrown out. They were certainly far from the tired, spiritless units Axl had first met in the arena. 

He glanced at Skrah, and the former gladiator merely shrugged and nodded toward the chattering crowd as if to encourage Axl to carry on. “Hey now,” Axl said, sensing that Xan was smiling on his other side. “Hey come on, one at a time, you-”

Something seemed to snap into place for him, and he straightened up and raised his voice as he gave a loud call of, “Everyone, stop the chatter and listen up!”

The room went silent, and this time Axl didn't shy away when all eyes turned toward him.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm,” he said, the faintest of smiles beginning to twitch at his lips, “but I can only listen to one of you at a time. We'll need to get an organized system in place for guards, patrols, medical procedures, and training for combat, defense, and teamwork. Has anyone here worked in construction or engineering?”

To his satisfaction, several hands went up.

“Good,” he said with a nod. “For now, everyone with construction or engineering experience, left side of the room. Anyone with medical experience, south side; Xan can help sort you out and get you up to speed. They’ll be our head medic from here on.” As he spoke, he saw the human straighten up proudly out of the corner of his eye, and he couldn’t help a small flicker of affection and amusement. “Combat training, right side, and I’ll handle that group. If your skill set varies, go where you feel you'd perform the strongest for now and discuss it with me in person.” His gaze softened faintly. “And anyone who doesn't want to be a part of this, you're free to go. You don't need to put yourself on the spot or give your reasons to anyone if you don't want to, but I'll be available to speak with you if you wish.”

He turned his head slightly to catch Skrah’s eye, and it was a moment's pause before he spoke up again. “Once we get more settled, we'll start organizing duties and hierarchies based on experience. But regardless, if I'm unavailable for one reason or another, you may defer to my second-in-command.” As he said as much, he gave a small nod toward the unit still standing silent and unwavering at his side. “Any immediate or pressing questions or concerns?”

Silence.

“Right then,” Axl said, drawing his pistol and raising it over his head. “Then let's get moving and start standing up for ourselves! We've all done enough sitting around, it's time we started fighting for our freedom! Break into groups and get to work!”

As the group split up without a moment's pause or protest, Axl allowed himself a small if tired smile. “Told you so,” Skrah muttered, nudging his elbow against the gunner’s side.

“Shut up,” Axl replied, nudging his friend right back. “Dick.”

“I'm sorry, I thought I was your second in command now.”

“You are. And you're also a dick. Now quit snarking at me and go help organize the construction group.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

Skrah and Xan both split up to meet with their respective groups, and Axl stayed where he was for a few moments, trying to gather his thoughts and settle his racing core. There was no backing out of what he’d started now, not a chance in hell. He was exhausted, and terrified, and uncertain of what would happen next, and . . .

And in spite of all that, somewhere deep in his core he knew that they could do this.

“All right,” he whispered to himself, drawing his pistol and spinning it on his index finger. “Then let’s unite and start making a change for the better. All of us.”


End file.
